The operators of the Deepwater Horizon left burned and injured rig workers for 10 hours alongside the burning rig before taking them ashore for medical treatment, a Houston law firm alleges in a lawsuit.

The suit was filed in Galveston County Court at Law on behalf of four plaintiffs involved in the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling platform, which sank 50 miles off the Louisiana shore in the Gulf of Mexico.

Attorneys with Arnold & Itkin filed the lawsuit May 4, seeking a jury trial to obtain an unspecified judgment against 10 defendants, including three divisions of Transocean Inc., the rig owner; four divisions of BP, which leased the rig; Halliburton Energy Systems; Sperry-Sun Drilling Systems and Cameron International Corp.

The plaintiffs are Joshua Kritzer, Bill Johnson and Nick Watkins, all of Louisiana, and Rhonda Burkeen of Mississippi, the widow of Aaron Burkeen, one of the 11 men killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire.

Kritzer was an employee of Offshore Cleaning Systems, and was working on the rig when an explosion threw him 30 feet down a hallway, where the ceiling collapsed on him, the lawsuit says. He suffered head and other physical injuries.