A federal judge in New Orleans shot down BP’s request to penalize Halliburton for allegedly destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

BP did not prove that it had been “prejudiced” by Halliburton’s actions, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan wrote in a ruling on Jan. 20. But Shushan told Halliburton to turn over a computer that ran tests on the cement slurry. The judge ordered a third party to run forensics tests on the computer to see if data Halliburton says was lost can be retrieved.

BP made the allegations against Halliburton on Dec. 5 in advance of a trial over blame for the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon blast.

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southcentral/2012/01/23/232305.htm