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By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK, March 17 (Reuters) - Transocean Ltd onThursday won the dismissal of an appeal by shareholders accusingthe owner of the doomed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig ofdeceiving them about its safety practices prior to the 2010 Gulfof Mexico oil spill.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said thelead plaintiff waited two months too long to sue over allegedmisstatements in an Oct. 2, 2007, proxy statement for theoffshore drilling company's merger with GlobalSantaFe Corp.
Shares of Transocean rose 3 percent after the decision wasissued.
Geoffrey Johnson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, declined tocomment. Transocean and its lawyers did not immediately respondto requests for comment.
Former GlobalSantaFe shareholders, who received Transoceanshares in the merger, said the proxy statement contained falseand misleading statements about the company's compliance withenvironmental laws.
Led by the DeKalb County Pension Fund in Decatur, Georgia,the shareholders sought to hold the Swiss company liable fortheir losses after the April 20, 2010, explosion of theDeepwater Horizon and blowout of BP Plc's Macondo well.
The disaster caused Transocean shares to lose more than halftheir value within seven weeks.
Writing for the appeals court, however, Circuit Judge JoséCabranes said the Georgia fund did not join the case until Dec.3, 2010, missing the three-year deadline to sue over the proxystatement.
He said it did not matter that the lawsuit was originallyfiled before the deadline, but by another shareholder that waslater dismissed from the case because it lacked standing.
The plaintiff "through minimal diligence" could have savedits case by getting involved sooner and offered no justificationfor its lateness, Cabranes wrote.
The Georgia fund had argued that the three-year clock beganto tick when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, bring Transocean'sprior misstatements to light.
Thursday's decision upheld a March 2014 dismissal of thelawsuit by U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan.
Transocean agreed in January 2013 to pay $1.4 billion incivil and criminal fines and penalties to settle U.S. governmentclaims over the spill.
BP has incurred $55.5 billion of costs for the spill. Itfaces its own U.S. shareholder lawsuit in Houston federal court.
In early afternoon trading, Transocean's American depositaryreceipts were up 3 percent at $11.56. Its shares inSwitzerland were up 3 percent at 11.11 Swiss francs.
The case is DeKalb County Pension Fund v. Transocean Ltd etal, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 14-0894. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by JeffreyBenkoe and Lisa Von Ahn)
