MONTGOMERY — Lewis Mashburn says the BP oil spill caused the closure of his small Montgomery oyster bar. Now, he is one of thousands of Alabama business owners trying to get their claims settled with the oil giant and, if necessary, filing lawsuits.

Mashburn and his wife, Karen, operated Capitol Oyster Bar for 15 years. Their sons once shucked oysters there. Their teenage daughter waitressed.

Then, the oil poured into the Gulf and customers no longer wanted to eat oysters, Mashburn said. Never mind that his oysters came from Apalachicola, Fla., and were never deemed unsafe.

After rumors that Gulf seafood might be unsafe were put to rest, other seafood restaurants and companies soon were getting their oysters from there too, but there was far less of it to get and the prices rose. Prices went from $40 for eight pounds of oysters to $50 for five pounds.

Mashburn said he was willing to pay the higher prices -- but needed diners who were willing to buy them.

“It wasn't that I couldn't get seafood, I couldn't get customers,'' Mashburn said.

The restaurant closed in late January and the building is for sale.

Mashburn said he and his wife had been looking to relocate the restaurant, and hope to reopen when they can afford it.

“I wouldn't have given up if I could pay my bills,'' Mashburn said.

“Work doesn't scare me, not working scares me.”

The Mashburns are among thousands of business and restaurant owners who have sought legal help in dealing with BP.

About 1,600 of them, including the Mashburns, have turned to Montgomery law firm Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles. The firm is representing businesses from around the state -- as well as Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas -- that say they were damaged by the spill.

About 150 of these businesses are restaurants. About 350 of those have filed lawsuits, attorney Rick Stratton said.

This month, Gov. Robert Bentley and Attorney General Luther Strange released a public service announcement reminding people of the April 20 deadline to file claims in a lawsuit involving Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig. They said people and companies that lost money, property, earnings or business because of the spill need to file documents with the court to preserve their rights.

Larry Fidel, president of the Alabama Restaurant Association, said the organization encouraged its about 1,000 members to seek legal representation before taking on the claims process.

“Our logic was that the BP people have a myriad of lawyers,” Fidel said. “We just encouraged members that they should not go into this blindly, that they should have some sort of representatives, whether it's Beasley Allen or their own lawyer.”

Mashburn said that when he originally filed a claim with BP, he was told he was too far away from the coast.

“They wrote me a letter saying I wasn't close enough to the Gulf to be affected,” he said.

In September, he got an attorney. After that, he received a “partial payment to recoup some losses,” Stratton said.

“We are in the process of trying to get the balance,” he said.

The men declined to disclose that amount, but Mashburn said that his business declined by 40 percent after the spill. 

“It took my business away,” he said. “That is the way I made my living, selling seafood.

David Scott, the owner of Destin Connection, a Montgomery seafood market, said that when he tried to contact the BP claims department about the losses he endured last summer as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, he was ignored.

“It's like trying to get on the phone with the president of the United States,” he said earlier this year. “They blow you off. I was just another number.”

Although his business is back to pre-spill numbers, Scott still is trying to get his claim resolved.

Similarly, George Sarris, owner of The Fish Market in Birmingham, said his business, which gets about 75 percent of its product from the Gulf, was hit by seafood shortages and then higher prices. He's gotten some money from BP, “but not enough to cover our loses.''

“We give them one number and they pay us another,'' Sarris said.

“And these are documented, factual numbers.''

Neither Scott nor Sarris would say how much money they lost as a direct result of the April oil spill, but said it was a large amount.

“June, July and August dropped off significantly,'' Scott said about his business that supplies seafood to 20 to 25 private restaurants in the River Region each week. “People were scared and very reluctant to buy seafood. All my restaurants, especially the ones that only sold seafood, took a tremendous hit.''

Because he continued to order seafood from Florida, supply was never a problem for Scott. For Sarris, it was higher prices and a lack of product that hurt the business that he said he built to provide reasonably priced, quality seafood to everyone. 

Twenty-five percent price increases were the norm, he said, adding that it was like going from fast-food burger prices to Kobe beef prices for his customers.

“For me, that's the worst part -- passing the prices on to the customer,'' he said.

At Sarris' restaurant, almost the entire menu is seafood. Most of it is from Alabama.  

“If you run an oyster bar, what are you going to give (customers)? Chicken fingers?''