Prices up, prices down

What is a “sole, superseding cause”? BP Exploration v. Claimaint ID 100191715 did not resolve the question, but found an argument sufficiently credible to require a remand for further review in the Deepwater Horizon claims process: “BP argues that Claimant passed the V-Shaped Revenue Pattern due solely to a price spike and drop in the price of fertilizer that was unrelated to the oil spill. According to BP, the spike caused Claimant’s revenues to soar and crash back down to normal rates thereafter. And, only because Claimant used months during the price spike as its benchmark period was it able to satisfy the ‘V-Shape Revenue Pattern’ test in Exhibit 4B. In other words, Claimant’s loss was not due to the spill; rather, the price spike in fertilizer was the sole, superseding cause for its loss.”  No. 19-30264 (March 3, 2020).