Transocean's legal team really take my breath away.

Transocean's legal team really takes my breath away.

I was listening to a story on NPR about how Transocean, the company that owns that oil rig that has completely fucked the Gulf of Mexico with its black emissions, treated the survivors of the explosion that set off this whole disaster. At first the most shocking thing in the story was hearing how one worker's wife, upon discovering he was still alive, took a cab to the airport for the first time in her life. It was the first time in her life that she ever took a cab. That's mind-blowing to me. And it's one of those little touches in a story that both catch your attention and set you up for a much bigger blow.

You see the lawyers sequestered the survivors in a situation not unlike a terrorist interrogation...

But before they could go home, there was one more form and one more attempt to get the survivors to give information. At the hotel, there were representatives for Transocean who asked [Christopher] Choy to initial a line that said: I was not injured as a result of the incident or evacuation.

Choy had seen men with open wounds and burning flesh. He knew 11 of his friends were dead. He felt he was among the lucky ones.

Exhausted and just wanting to get home with [Choy's wife] Monica, he signed.

The aftermath?

And when Choy sued his employer, Transocean wrote back and said: But you signed that form. You said you weren't injured.

Choy's angry, too, that it's being held against him.

"It shouldn't count, because I'd been up for almost 40 hours ... and just gone through hell," Choy says. "And they want to throw papers in my face for me to sign to take them, you know, out of their responsibility.

Despicable.

Photo: Reuters