Stephen Baldwin sues Costner over oil device

Stephen Baldwin has sued fellow actor Kevin Costner over their investments in a device that BP used in trying to clean up the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, The Associated Press reports.

The federal lawsuit filed in New Orleans on Wednesday by Baldwin and a friend claims Costner and a business partner duped them out of their shares of an $18 million deal for BP to purchase oil-separating centrifuges from a company they formed after the April 20 spill.

BP ordered 32 of the centrifuges capable of cleaning crude oil from water at a rate of hundreds of gallons per minute, and deployed a few of them on a barge in June. BP capped the well in July and kept any more oil from leaking until the seafloor gusher was permanently sealed in September.

Costner's publicist, Arnold Robinson, declined to comment Thursday on the suit's allegations.

Baldwin and his friend Spyridon Contogouris owned shares in Ocean Therapy Solutions, the company that marketed the centrifuges to BP.

But the two claim they were deliberately excluded from a June 8 meeting between Costner, his business partner Patrick Smith and a BP executive, Doug Suttles. At the meeting, the suit says, Suttles agreed to make an $18 million deposit on a $52 million order for the 32 devices.

Baldwin and Contogouris said they didn't know about the deal when, three days later, they agreed to sell their shares of the company for $1.4 million and $500,000, respectively.

Baldwin and his friend say they were entitled to shares of BP's deposit. Instead, their suit claims Costner and Smith "schemed" to use money from BP's deposit to buy out their shares in the company.