Senior managers at BP are facing legal action in the US accusing them of breaching their duty to shareholders by allowing equipment at the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska to deteriorate.

A lawsuit filed in New York yesterday on behalf of a private investor claims that senior executives at the company, including the chief executive, Lord Browne of Madingley, failed to carry out essential repairs before the oil field, America’s largest, had to be partially shut down.

The closure caused significant disruption to US oil supplies and caused BP shares to fall.

"Despite their awareness of the dangerous effect of the corrosion in the pipeline, defendants repeatedly failed to fund the work necessary to correct the problem," the suit alleged. It did not specify an amount sought in damages.

A spokesman for BP declined to comment, but the company has previously said it is expecting a repair bill of around $200 million (£106 million) to fix the field.

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The suit was filed in the Manhattan Federal Court for the Southern District of New York and could be the first of a number of copycat lawsuits filed on behalf of investors in other US states.

Class action law firms only need one investor in any state to put their name to a case before it can be launched. If the defendant fails to have the case dismissed, US courts typically consolidate separate class actions into one and appoint a single court to hear the case on behalf of all investors.

US class action law firms often try to involve British or European shareholders in their claims because it broadens the scope of any eventual settlement.

According to Alan Owens, a litigation partner at Irwin Mitchell, a UK law firm, it also increases the legal fees.

"Class action law firms generally take between 15 per cent and 25 per cent of the final settlement in fees and, because settlements are based on the number of shareholders affected, it makes sense to include as broad a range as possible.

"Since BP is such a widely held private and institutional share in the UK, the big class action firms will be scouring the UK to find an investor willing to join a case."

In June US lawyers secured a $1.1 billion settlement in a class action lawsuit relating to overstatement of profits against Ahold, the Dutch supermarket group, for which European investors were eligible to claim compensation.

However Mr Owens cautioned that there is no certainty that the case against BP will succeed. "Class actions have an extremely high attrition rate either because they are dismissed by the courts as without merit or because the lawyers decide there isn’t sufficient interest to follow through with it," he said.

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