Hollywood stars Kevin Costner and Stephen Baldwin to square off in New Orleans courtroom

Less than a week after scoring a hit as the star of the miniseries “Hatfields & McCoys” on the History Channel, Kevin Costner will step into a leading role Monday in a New Orleans drama about a feud that could be called “Costner & Baldwin.” But the story won’t unfold on television. It will take place in U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman’s courtroom, where the actor-director is being sued by the actor Stephen Baldwin, who, with another plaintiff, is seeking unspecified damages in a civil suit growing out of the 2010 BP oil spill.

The other defendants are Patrick Smith, a business associate of Costner’s, and Pacific West Resources, a California company in which they are officers.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday at 9 a.m., and the trial is expected to last two weeks. Both actors are listed as likely witnesses. The suit, which was filed in December 2010, focuses on a device that, Costner had said earlier that year, should be deployed during the oil spill cleanup because it would separate oil from water.

Baldwin and Spyridon Contogouris, his friend and fellow plaintiff, were minority stockholders in Ocean Therapy Solutions, which was formed to market the machines, technically known as centrifugal oil separators. They claim that Costner kept them in the dark about a meeting in which BP agreed to make an $18 million deposit on an order for 32 of the devices that was estimated at $52 million.

Michael DeMocker, Times-Picayune archive
In July 2010, actor Kevin Costner and BP executive Doug Suttles, right, attend an orientation at the slip of the Ella G in Port Fourchon. Edison Chouest Offshore and Ocean Therapy Solutions showed off the massive platform vessel equipped with four centrifuge devices and a skimmer that was designed to clean up to 800,000 gallons of oil a day.

Costner, whose celebrity had brought attention to the machines, helped arrange the transaction, the Los Angeles Times reported last year. The separators never were used to fight the spill, Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon said Friday.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/06/hollywood_stars_costner_and_ba.html#incart_river