Kevin Costner Wins Courtroom Battle over Stephen Baldwin
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Charley Gallay/WireImage(NEW ORLEANS) — In the New Orleans courtroom clash of Hollywood actors, Kevin Costner is the winner.
A federal jury Thursday evening rejected a claim by the actor Stephen Baldwin and his friend, Spyridon Contogouris, that Costner and a business partner duped them by keeping them uninformed on a multimillion-dollar deal between Costner’s company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, and the oil company BP.
Baldwin, the youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers, and Contogouris sold their shares in Ocean Therapy Solutions before it sold cleanup devices to BP for use in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This led Baldwin to file a suit in December 2010 against Costner and Patrick Smith, over profits from the technology leased by BP.
Costner’s device is a five-ton centrifuge designed to separate water from oil, spit out clean water and save the oil on ships, Smith said in his testimony.
The timeline of the case goes as far back as the production for Costner’s film Waterworld. Costner starred and co-directed the science-fiction film, which tanked at the box office when it was released in 1995.
In the early 1990s, Costner financed and oversaw the development of an oil-and-water-separation technology under the auspices of a corporation owned and managed by him called CINC Inc., an acronym for Costner in Nevada Corporation.
After the April 2010 oil spill, Costner made headlines again marketing his device and snagging a $52 million deal with BP for 32 of his centrifuges.
“It separates oil and water at incredibly high speeds under very difficult conditions,” Costner told Good Morning America‘s Sam Champion in 2010.
The devices weren’t used to cap the well but were designed to collect oil on the water’s surface.
Baldwin has said he was bought out of Costner’s company for $500,000 while Contogouris was bought out for $1.4 million.
BP reportedly never used the 32 devices it ordered from Costner’s company, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. By September 2010, the well had been sealed with cement and a relief well.
Costner’s memorable work includes starring in The Bodyguard, Dancing with Wolves and Field of Dreams. Baldwin, the younger brother of actor Alec Baldwin, is best known for Bio-Dome and playing Barney Rubble in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.
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