Stephen Baldwin, the youngest of the four acting Baldwin brothers, lost his lawsuit against Kevin Costner in which he alleged Costner had cheated him out of millions by encouraging him to prematurely sell his shares in a company that made a fortune selling oil cleanup equipment after the BP oil spill.
The jury only deliberated for 2 hours before they cleared Costner.
The equipment Costner’s company developed starting in the 1990s was a five-ton centrifuge designed to separate water from oil, spit out clean water and save the oil on ships. After the BP spill, Costner’s company CINC made a $52 million deal with BP for 32 of his centrifuges.
The centrifuges didn’t cap the bleeding oil wells but collected the oil on the surface. Baldwin sold his shares for $500,000 while his fellow plaintiff was bought out for $1.4 million.
In 2009, Baldwin and his wife defaulted on the mortgage on their home in Upper Grandview, New York. He filed for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in New York, that year.
The irony in the whole case is that BP apparently never used the equipment.