Rig survivors felt coerced to sign waivers

Hours after they had been rescued, workers who survived an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico were asked to sign form letters about what they had seen and whether they had been injured. Lawyers for the oil rig's owner, Transocean, requested that workers who had survived the blast sign the form in the wake of the April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon. This was hours before the workers had been allowed to see their families. Now some of those survivors say they were coerced and that the forms are being used against them as they file lawsuits seeking compensation for psychiatric problems and other injuries from the blast. "The form that they made them sign had, 'I was here when it happened, I didn't see anything.' Or 'I saw this and I was or was not hurt,'–says Steven Gordon, a Houston attorney who represents some of the survivors. It's a pre-printed form letter. The surviving rig worker was asked to fill in the date, his name and address and where he was at the time the evacuation was ordered. Then there are the two paragraphs at the end.