BP Ordinary Shares

Berman Tabacco represented four Ohio pension funds— Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, and Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund (the “Ohio Funds”)—in connection with an individual action filed against BP in connection with the Ohio Funds’ purchase of BP ordinary shares on the London Stock Exchange (“LSE”). These ordinary share claims were based on the same nucleus of facts that originally had been at issue in the federal litigation, but were dismissed from that action after the court ruled that ordinary share purchases on the LSE were not protected by the federal securities laws, citing the Supreme Court precedent Morrison v National Australia Bank, 561 U.S. 247, 130 S. Ct. 2869 (2010). The Ohio Funds asserted common law claims against BP for both pre-spill misrepresentations regarding the safety of its deepwater drilling operations and post-spill misrepresentations regarding the severity of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  The case settled in 2021.