RichieLion: Yes, there are laws. But I'll ask you this - and I hope I don't sound condescending - but even with the laws, what prevents government and industry getting together voluntarily to expedite the handling of aspects of this disaster?

In other words, why wait for the courts to demand good intentions when BP was ready to go immediately. I mean, even if the justification from BP is "Well, we might avoid some of our people going to jail and we'll save a bundle, perhaps billions, in legal fees and it's the best way to get our stock price back up (to get this in our rear view mirror) - let's do it". So what?

In this case, perhaps it's BP seeing ghosts of Exxon past and they don't want any of that. Even from a purely BP-selfish point of view, the sooner they get ahead of this, the sooner their stock price rebounds and the sooner they pay dividends.