BP is not too happy with Emeril Lagasse.
According to Eater, the oil company has taken a out a full-page ad in the New York Times on Thursday, bashing the chef's New Orleans restaurant in the oil spill settlement claim. BP is in the process of paying back awarded settlements, as a result of the company's oil spill in 2010.
The company reportedly took aim at the chef's eateries as a way of forcing business looking for "oil spill settlement money to prove their losses were caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010."
In the ad, one in a series of ads from BP, the company asks if anyone would pay the claim and goes on to outline the story of a "celebrity chef," who remained unnamed. Lagasse's group was awarded over $8,000,000 as part of the settlement.
The ad goes on to state that Lagasse earned "more revenue in 2010 than he did two years prior to the oil spill," and the money was based on a "fictional loss" subjected to licensing fees that the eatery began paying before the spill. The ads are claim Lagasse management group abused the settlement program.
On Friday, Lagasse's Homebase management group and the Deepwater Horizon claim administrator stated the claims were legal under that "terms of the BP-approved settlement agreement." Homebase is claims they have not received money yet from the settlement.
"Emeril's Homebase filed a claim in accordance with the settlement agreement that was set forth by BP and administered by the federal court in New Orleans," a company spokeswoman said. "We have not received any payment on the claim."
After an appeals court sided with BP, district judge Carl Barbier temporarily suspended payments to businesses involved in the settlement argument. Barbier lambasted the oil company for forcing businesses to prove their losses were caused by the spill. BP argues the company has already paid more than $500 million for "undeserving claims."
"Despite these obvious red flags, the Gulf Settlement Program pushed this claim through to payment without concern that the licensing fees paid to use the chef's own trademark couldn't possibly be related to the spill," the ad said.
Lagasse, who has 13 restaurants in New Orleans, Las Vegas, Orlando, Fla., Charlotte, N.C., and Bethlehem, Penn., defended BP in an interview with NOLA.com, months earlier.
"People can criticize BP all they want, but those guys stepped up to the plate and they did what they had to do," Lagasse said in June. "Not only here, not only in Mississippi, not only in Alabama, not only in Florida - they took it very seriously."
