IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

No. 14-31026

Summary Calendar

IN RE: DEEPWATER HORIZON

__________________________________

LAKE EUGENIE LAND & DEVELOPMENT, INCORPORATED; ET AL

 Plaintiffs

v.

BP EXPLORATION & PRODUCTION, INCORPORATED; BP AMERICA 

PRODUCTION COMPANY; BP, P.L.C.; PLAINTIFFS’ STEERING 

COMMITTEE, 

 Defendants–Appellees

v.

WALKER FISHING FLEET, INCORPORATED, 

 Claimant–Appellant

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Louisiana

USDC No. 2:10-MD-2179

Before JONES, PRADO, and OWEN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:*

 

* Pursuant to 5th Cir. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not 

be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5th Cir. 

R. 47.5.4.

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

FILED

June 16, 2015

Lyle W. Cayce

Clerk

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This case arises from the class-action settlement program for civil claims 

arising from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Claimant–Appellant Walker 

Fishing Fleet, Inc. (Walker) is a commercial fishing company active in the Gulf 

of Mexico. It appeals an award of $416,900.71 that it received pursuant to 

Defendant–Appellee BP’s class-action Settlement Agreement. We affirm.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP established the CourtSupervised Settlement Program (CSSP). See In re Deepwater Horizon, 732 F.3d 

326, 329 (5th Cir. 2013). The CSSP is managed by a court-approved Claims 

Administrator, who makes an initial determination on a party’s claim. The 

CSSP provides multiple levels of appellate review. First, a party may request 

that the Claims Administrator reconsider an award based on an alleged 

calculation error, a failure to take into account relevant information or data, 

or failure to follow the standards governing a determination. The Claims 

Administrator issues a Post-Reconsideration Eligibility Notice that either 

party may use to seek a second level of review before an Appeal Panelist.1 The 

Appeal Panel issues a written ruling that is subject to a third level of appellate 

review, this time by Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Judge Barbier retains discretion to accept or deny review.

Central to this appeal is the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric 

Administration (NOAA) Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) system. The IFQ 

system allocates among Gulf of Mexico fishermen specific percentages of the 

annual catch of various species of fish. The IFQ system permits a fisherman to 

lease his right to catch fish—i.e., to lease a percentage of his shares—to 

another fisherman for a given period of time. Therefore, the NOAA keeps two 

 

1 Depending on the amount of the award, the claim is reviewed by either a single 

Appeal Panelist or a three-person Appeal Panel.

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ledgers: the share ledger tracks share ownership, while the allocation ledger 

tracks changes in the right to catch fish, including transactions in which an 

owner leases his shares to another. As BP notes, the NOAA IFQ system 

contemplates a multitiered system of share ownership: “The difference 

between the two ledgers is akin to the difference between fee-simple ownership 

of real property (the equivalent of what the share ledger tracks) and a term-ofyears lease for the same land (what the allocation ledger tracks).”

The Settlement Agreement relies in part on the NOAA IFQ system to 

structure its Seafood Compensation Program (SCP). This program guarantees 

a $2.3 billion fund to be distributed to those people and entities involved in the 

seafood industry—including IFQ shareholders—that sustained economic loss 

as a result of the spill. It provides a fixed compensation amount to be

distributed among IFQ shareholders according to their respective “right to 

catch” specific species of fish, measured to the nearest 0.0001% of the total 

pound allotment. To establish its eligibility for compensation using the IFQ 

method, an entity must provide “[p]roof of ownership as of April 20, 2012 of the 

Individual Fishing Quota share” for a given species. Compensation is 

calculated in two steps. First, “[t]he value of a Claimant’s IFQ shares is 

calculated as the product of the species-specific number of quota shares held 

and the species-specific value per quota share.” Second, “the compensation 

received by a Claimant is calculated by multiplying the value of the Claimant’s 

share . . . by 0.625.”

Walker first filed a claim with the SCP in September 2012. In July 2013, 

the Claims Administrator made a finding that Walker possessed 1.485615% 

red-snapper IFQ shares for the applicable time period, and it awarded Walker

a total of $416,900.71 for those shares. Walker requested reconsideration, and 

the Claims Administrator confirmed the award in August 2013. Next, Walker 

submitted a request for appeal, contending its award ought to have been based 

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on the 2.528500% share Walker owned according to the share ledger. BP 

submitted briefing in support of the original award. The Appeal Panelist 

confirmed the initial award: though Walker demonstrated it held a 2.528500% 

share of red snapper on January 1, 2010, “a reconstruction of ledger 

transactions” indicated Walker’s share on April 20, 2010 was only 1.485615%. 

Finally, Walker submitted a request for discretionary review to the district 

court. Judge Barbier denied review on July 29, 2014, and this appeal timely 

followed.

Before this Court, Walker contends the Claims Administrator erred in 

basing Walker’s compensation for lost fishing revenue the IFQ allocation 

ledger rather than the share ledger.

II. DISCUSSION

We have jurisdiction over this appeal under the collateral-order doctrine. 

The denial of discretionary review at issue “(1) conclusively determine[s] the 

disputed question, (2) resolve[s] an important issue completely separate from 

the merits of the action, and (3) [is] effectively unreviewable on appeal from a 

final judgment,” Henry v. Lake Charles Am. Press, L.L.C., 566 F.3d 164, 171 

(5th Cir. 2009) (quoting Coopers & Lybrand v. Livesay, 437 U.S. 463, 468 

(1978)); see also In re Deepwater Horizon, No. 13-30843, __ F.3d __ (5th Cir. 

May 8, 2015).

As noted, the Agreement gives the district court discretion to decide 

whether it will review an award. We review its denials for abuse of discretion. 

See Wilton v. Seven Falls Co., 515 U.S. 277, 289–90 (1995). The interpretation 

of a settlement agreement is a question of contract law that this Court reviews 

de novo. In re Deepwater Horizon, 744 F.3d 370, 374 (5th Cir. 2014), cert. 

denied, 135 S. Ct. (2014). Therefore, our review of the district court’s 

interpretation of the Agreement is “effectively de novo because ‘[a] district 

court by definition abuses its discretion when it makes an error of law.’” United 

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States v. Delgado–Nuñez, 295 F.3d 494, 496 (5th Cir. 2002) (alteration in 

original) (quoting Koon v. United States, 518 U.S. 81, 100 (1996)). 

Ordinary principles of contract interpretation apply to this settlement 

agreement. See Fla. Educ. Ass’n, Inc. v. Atkinson, 481 F.2d 662, 663 (5th Cir. 

1973) (per curiam). The Agreement provides that it “shall be interpreted in 

accordance with General Maritime Law.” Maritime law requires us “to 

interpret, to the extent possible, all the terms in a contract without rendering 

any of them meaningless or superfluous.” Chembulk Trading LLC v. Chemex 

Ltd., 393 F.3d 550, 555 (5th Cir. 2004).

The provisions at issue here comprise the compensation framework for 

IFQ shareholders. The Agreement provides compensation to those who can 

provide “[p]roof of ownership [of IFQ shares] as of April 20, 2010,” the day of 

the blowout. It authorizes compensation based on the number of shares held 

on the relevant date:

Individual Fishing Quota Shareholders that have provided the 

proof of eligibility and the required documentation . . . shall receive 

the compensation based on the value of Individual Fishing Quota 

shares held. IFQ shares are defined as the right to catch 0.0001% 

of the pounds of the catch [of] the relevant species that can be 

caught by commercial fishermen under the relevant quota.

The Agreement also specifies the lump sum to be distributed among IFQ 

shareholders: “In the aggregate, IFQ holders will receive compensation of $50 

million. . . . IFQ Shareholder Claimants will be compensated in proportion to 

the percentage of the total value of IFQ shares, calculated across all species.” 

In other words, the Agreement allocates a fixed amount of money to be

distributed among those eligible for compensation.

Walker contends the Claims Administrator erred in using the allocation 

ledger to calculate its shares for IFQ-compensation purposes. It argues that

the relevant metric is “shares held,” and that the Allocation Ledger “merely 

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demonstrates that Walker made several allocation transfers in 2010 prior to 

the Spill, not share transfers.” But as BP responds, the Agreement defines “IFQ 

shares” themselves as “the right to catch” a percentage of the relevant fish. As 

the Claims Administrator and the Appeals Panelist determined, this is the 

relevant definition for purposes of the IFQ compensation plan.

The Claims Administrator’s interpretation is consonant with the broad 

purpose of the Settlement Agreement. The SCP uses a limited fund to 

“compensate Commercial Fishermen . . . for economic loss” based on the shares 

each fisherman held on the day of the blowout. The SCP focuses on day-of harm 

rather than on future economic risk. See In re Oil Spill by Oil Rig Deepwater 

Horizon in Gulf of Mex., on April 20, 2010, 910 F. Supp. 2d 891, 956–57 (E.D. 

La. 2012) (rejecting objections to the Settlement Agreement that “the SCP fails 

to account for future risks to Gulf of Mexico fisheries” because the program 

“was a reasonable compromise considering evidence . . . that most of the 

relevant commercial species appear to be within normal, pre-spill trends”). By 

defining share ownership with reference to an entity’s right to catch fish as 

reflected in the allocation ledger, the Claims Administrator’s interpretation 

both most accurately compensates for the actual economic harm caused by the 

blowout and avoids double recovery.

We conclude that the Claims Administrator’s interpretation of the 

Settlement Agreement was correct, that it properly calculated Walker’s IFQ 

share, and therefore that the district court did not abuse its discretion in 

denying Walker’s request for discretionary review.

III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM.

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