BP, the London-based oil giant, sent a notice to its shareholders Thursday disclosing the proposed settlement of a shareholder lawsuit in Alaska state court accusing BP of mismanagement that led to a number of disasters.

The biggest, a blast at a Texas City refinery, killed 15 workers in 2005. BP proposed last week to pay $50 million to settle claims from that accident. In March and August of 2006, spills from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline resulted in partial shutdowns and criminal fines. Federal prosecutors have also accused BP traders of manipulating the market for propane gas.

Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins—the law firm founded by William S. Lerach, the Class-Action King—filed the suit in October 2006 on behalf of the Unite Here union's pension fund and the London Pension Fund Authority.

The settlement requires BP to make several corporate governance changes, including:

•  Requiring them to hold annual meetings with the company's top 20 shareholders;
•  Arranging regular visits for BP board members to operational sites;
•  Including BP's operational health, safety, and environmental performance in the principles used to calculate performance pay to executives;
•  Improving shareholder access to the proxy and webcasting the annual shareholder meeting.

BP also agreed that John Browne, the company's former chief executive, would permanently waive his rights to termination benefits that were frozen last year.

Under the settlement, which will be reviewed in court at a May 7 fairness hearing, Coughlin Stoia would receive $9.8 million in legal fees. Shareholders aren't in line to get any money.

"While corporate governance is for many people a remote subject, for the working families represented by the pension funds that brought this case and the residents in the communities that BP operates, changes like those agreed to by BP's management in this settlement can, over time, have a beneficial impact on the value of people's retirement savings and the quality of their communities," said Coughlin Stoia partner Patrick Coughlin.

BP fought the lawsuit, first pressing to get the case removed from state to federal court. That happened, but, alas, several BP executives, among them Lord John Browne, BP's chief executive until May 2007, had connections to Alaska. The plaintiffs included Alaska residents, and that destroyed "diversity jurisdiction,"—meaning a dispute between residents of two different states—a common ground for getting into federal court.

Back in state court, BP pressed to dismiss the case, saying that English common law applied to the case; under common law, a plaintiff cannot bring a shareholder derivative case for wrongs done to a company when those acts or omissions could have been ratified by a majority of the shareholders.

In May 2007, Superior Court judge Jack W. Smith of Anchorage denied the motion to dismiss, finding that the law of Alaska applied to the suit.

BP is the largest non-U.S. company listed on the stock exchange, according the plaintiffs' complaint.