Don Brunell

In football, players who jump on the ball carrier after he’s been tackled get a 15-yard penalty for piling on. But in a courtroom, piling on can get you billions of dollars.

That’s exactly what the trial lawyers are doing in the lawsuits against BP for the Deepwater Horizon spill.

In 2010, BP’s oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and spilling almost five million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days. It was a disaster for BP and the Gulf states, but since then, the company has attempted to make amends.

In 2012, BP agreed to four years of government monitoring of its safety...