Tag Archives: lawsuit
North Atlantic Right whale trouble: Lawsuit on protections could last for months
Environmental groups sued the U.S. government with a claim that regulators’ failure to protect the North Atlantic right whale from harm was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled April 9 that they were right. The government, environmentalists and industry members who are involved in the lawsuit must still return to court to determine a remedy. Boasberg ruled that the risk posed to the whales by the lobster fishery was too great to be sustainable, and that a remedy could ultimately result in new restrictions on lobster fishing. Members of the industry, including the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, have vowed to fight to protect the fishery. >click to read< 11:27
NCLA Sues Commerce, NOAA, NMFS over Its Unlawful New at-Sea Monitor Mandate
The New Civil Liberties Alliance today filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island,,, The suit challenges the agencies’ unconstitutional and statutorily unauthorized effort to force fishing companies to pay for a new agency enforcement program. NCLA represents Relentless Inc., Huntress Inc., and their related company, Seafreeze Fleet LLC,,, The at-sea monitor mandate for the nation’s Atlantic herring fleet violates the U.S. Constitution’s Article I, and the agencies have exceeded the bounds of their statutory authority because Congress never allowed these agencies to create or to require the industry to finance at-sea monitors or an at-sea monitoring program in the Atlantic herring fishery. more >click to read< 15:07
Judge hears arguments on lawsuit against EPA over withdrawn protections for Pebble
Monday U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason heard arguments on whether or not to dismiss a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency over its decision to withdraw a proposed determination which had effectively blocked developing the Pebble Mine. Last October, the Bristol Bay Defense Alliance, a coalition of groups representing native tribes in Bristol Bay, commercial fishermen and the seafood industry filed suit against the EPA. Environmental groups then filed two additional lawsuits. The three lawsuits have since been consolidated. >click to read< 08:51
Climate Change Is Sending This Fluke Fight to Court
Disputes over fish quotas are not new, and the $25.2 million East Coast market for fluke—although a reliable bread-and-butter fish—is not particularly lucrative. And New York has sued to alter the quota before. But this lawsuit is being watched closely because it introduces a new factor into the decades-old quota system: the impact of climate change. Quickly warming waters have reshaped the entire fishing industry on the East Coast, moving the fluke dramatically to the north. The lawsuit argues that now 80% of all fluke catches occur within 150 miles of Long Island and that state allocations need to be updated to reflect the fishes’ evolving location. >click to read< 08:17
California: Fewer Whales Entangled As Crab Fishermen Face Financial Struggle
Crab fishers are frustrated by recent closures, and CDFW is working with stakeholders and fishermen to come up with an economic plan that can help fishers deal with the changing industry. “We are seeing that the closures affect smaller operators disproportionately,”,,, Dick Ogg is a commercial fisherman out of Bodega Bay, California. His single-boat company is considered a medium-sized operation in the area because he catches many species. In addition to crabbing, Ogg shifts with the seasons to fish salmon, black cod, and albacore as well. This allows him to have income throughout the year. He humbly calls himself a “newbie”, having only been a commercial fisherman for 21 years. >click to read< 07:05
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Sued Over Steelhead Farming in Puget Sound
Environmental and conservation groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife over the agency’s recent decision to allow Cooke Aquaculture to rear farmed steelhead trout in Puget Sound. The suit, filed in the Superior Court of Washington, alleges that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a permit to allow steelhead fish feedlots, a type of fish-farming practice, to operate in the complex waterways of Puget Sound without any consideration of the consequences they would have on the environment. >click to read< 13:01
Maine Lobstering Union that’s suing its former CEO, hires a new management team
A lobster fishing cooperative that is suing its former CEO in federal court has hired two people to round out its new management team. Lobster 207 LLC, also known as the Maine Lobstering Union, has appointed Carmen Look as its chief financial officer and Brian Hemingway as its director of business development, the organization said Thursday.,,, The cooperative is alleging in a lawsuit that Pettegrow and his parents defrauded and stole from the union after selling it their wholesale lobster business for $4 million in 2017. The lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in Bangor. >click to read< 12:39
Court: Trump Administration Unlawfully OK’d Longline Fishing Off California
The ruling released late Friday responds to a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network after the fishing permit issued in April exempted vessels from the federal ban on longline gear off California. Longlines stretch up to 60 miles, with thousand of baited hooks intended to catch swordfish and tuna. >click to read< 07:52
Louisiana Native Sues Fishing Captain Following Maritime Injury
A Louisiana man is suing a Texas fishing captain following injuries suffered while working on the captain’s vessel. David Robling, the plaintiff, was working aboard the fishing boat, Red Bull, on February 20, 2019, when he suffered injuries resulting from the negligence and unseaworthiness of the ship-captain, Delbert E. Bull, Jr. The suit, filed in the Galveston County District Court, is in accord with the Jones Act, specifically 46 U.S.C. §30104, which protects seamen injured in the course of their employment and which affords them the right to legal action and a trial by jury against the ship’s owner. >click to read<19:45
Boat owner responds to Port of Astoria lawsuit
A boat owner being sued by the Port of Astoria for abandoning his vessel shot back recently,,,,The Port sued Nick Mathias, a California resident and owner of the Coastwise, claiming he fell behind on moorage before sending a letter in September notifying the agency he would be abandoning the vessel. Mathias claims the Port in 2014 was charging him $2,000 annually for moorage fees, raising it to $3,000 the next year, $9,600 the third year and finally $37,000. The Port has closed all access to the East Mooring Basin causeway because of a rotting substructure, leaving a dwindling group of boat owners to reach their vessels by skiff. >click to read<18:53
Environmental groups sue to restrict salmon fishing for Northwest orcas
The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit nearly two decades ago to force the U.S. government to list the orcas as endangered, and the Wild Fish Conservancy asked the U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday to order officials to reconsider a 2009 finding that commercial and recreational fisheries did not jeopardize the orcas’ survival. >Video, click to read<10:09
Fishing groups sue Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District
A lawsuit was filed against the Humboldt Bay Harbor Recreation and Conservation District by the Humboldt Fishermen’s Marketing Association and Trinidad Bay Fishermen’s Association. The two fishing groups are suing over a long list of allegations that include alleged dredging failures and money management issues among other things.,,,“Our objection is that the harbor district has essentially abandoned their mandated duty to maintain and protect the Woodley Island Marina for the benefit of the fishing fleet,” said Ken Bates, vice president of HFMA, who emailed a news release announcing the lawsuit. >click to read<11:45
Charges, defendants added to lobster wholesaler’s lawsuit alleging embezzlement
A lawsuit by a Saco lobster wholesaler that alleges a partner in the business embezzled more than $1.5 million has been moved to federal court and expanded with new defendants and RICO charges. The original lawsuit was filed in August in York County Superior Court. It was moved this month to U.S. District Court in Portland. The wholesaler, Sea Salt, which also operates a restaurant on Route 1 in Saco, alleges that the man overseeing the company’s shipping operation, Matthew Bellerose of Scarborough, set up a sham customer,,, >click to read<13:03
‘Slime eel’ massacre caused by Washington man’s boat accident, lawsuit says
An Oregon boater is in a bit of a mess after he caused thousands of pounds of live “slime eels” to die, according to a lawsuit from the company that planned to sell the hagfish to Asia consumers.
Darin Rodabaugh is accused of negligence in a lawsuit from AA Seafood of Depoe Bay. The lawsuit claims Rodabaugh, from Kennewick, Washington, was pulling his boat out of the water at the Port of Depoe Bay on Sept. 10, 2016, and didn’t lower the antenna or mast.,,But more importantly to AA Seafood, it knocked out the power to the warehouse where the company stored 16,400 pounds of live hagfish.,,, This quiet industry went largely unnoticed until 2017 when a truck from AA Seafood carrying 7,500 pounds of live hagfish lost several containers along U.S. 101 near Cape Foulweather about 3 miles south of Depoe Bay. photo’s >click to read<13:39
A lobster wholesaler is suing one of its part owners, alleging he embezzled nearly $1.5 million from the business.
Sea Salt, which operates as a wholesaler and a restaurant on Route 1 in Saco, alleges that the part owner, Matthew Bellerose of Scarborough, set up a sham customer with another man and then sent the phony client thousands of dollars worth of lobsters without billing the customer. The lobsters were then resold, the lawsuit says. The suit says Bellerose and Vincent J. Mastropasqua of Portland, who also is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, set up a company called “East End Transport” and established a fictitious customer of Sea Salt named “Mastro’s.” Both businesses listed their addresses as a UPS store in Scarborough. Mastropasqua is a part-time UPS employee. >click to read< “08:12
Conservationist intends to sue five states over whale entanglements, including individual lobstermen
A noted North Atlantic right whale conservationist who is suing Massachusetts officials over the licensing of commercial lobster pot gear has said he intends to do the same thing in five other states starting with Maine. The Maine DNR is killing and injuring endangered whales and sea turtles in U.S. coastal waters from its licensing of lobster pot gear, and gill nets, said Richard “Max” Strahan of Whale Safe USA, which is based in Cambridge. >click to read<08:18
The High-Stakes Battle Over Obama’s Atlantic Ocean National Monument
Mining and drilling for oil are already banned in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, established by former president Barack Obama in 2016 as the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean, 150 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. Within five years, too, all commercial fishing will be phased out – or, at least that was the plan. A federal judge is now weighing the fate of those protections in a lawsuit originally filed in March 2017 by a coalition of New England fishing groups – and it has led to a rare case of President Donald Trump defending his predecessor’s authority. >click to read<10:27
NOAA, NGOs debate effects of ocean farms on wildlife, Litigation may be deterring investors
Federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico have been open to fish farming for two years, but no farms yet exist. In January 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service issued a rule that would let companies apply for 10-year permits to farm fish in federal waters of the Gulf, with five-year renewals thereafter.,, Paul W. Zajicek, executive director of the National Aquaculture Association, suspects companies interested in starting offshore farms are waiting for results of a federal lawsuit against the fisheries service.,, Those behind the lawsuit say NOAA’s fisheries service is trying to regulate aquaculture as fishing but lacks authority to expand into aquaculture. >click to read<21:43
Obama Banned Fishing In 5,000 Square Miles Of Rich Ocean — Fishermen Want It Back
A Washington, D.C., district court lifted a stay Wednesday on a fishing industry lawsuit to reverse a 5,000 square mile marine national monument created off New England’s coast in 2016. The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument will ban fishing in an area roughly the size of Connecticut in less than a decade. Seafood and fishing trade groups are suing to rescind the monument former President Barack Obama crafted near the end of his 2nd term, to restore an area of ocean that has been an important source of lobster and fish for decades, according to the lawsuit. >click to read<18:29
Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Failure to Protect Pacific Humpback Whales Threatened by Fishing Gear, Ship Strikes, Oil Spills
The Center for Biological Diversity, Turtle Island Restoration Network and Wishtoyo Foundation today sued the Trump administration for failing to protect humpback whale habitat in the Pacific Ocean, where the animals face threats from fisheries, ship strikes and oil spills. Today’s lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Francisco, aims to force the National Marine Fisheries Service to follow the Endangered Species Act’s requirement to designate critical habitat within one year of listing a species as threatened or endangered and not authorize actions that,,, >click to read< 16:12
Feds Sued to Force Protection of Alaska’s Pacific Walrus
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the Trump administration Thursday over its denial of Endangered Species Act protection to the Pacific walrus. The lawsuit, filed in Anchorage federal court, challenges the October 2017 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finding the Pacific walrus does not warrant listing as a threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. “The service’s listing decision deprives the walrus of the ESA protections which it is both entitled to and desperately needs,” the complaint states. >click to read<15:30
So Cal Cities Sue Over Tijuana Sewage Polluting US Beaches
Southern California cities, tired of their beaches and waterways being polluted by sewage entering U.S. waters from Tijuana, Mexico, sued the international agency tasked with upholding the Clean Water Act on Friday.,, “Human sewage, enormous volumes of sediment, industrial wastes, pesticides, massive amounts of trash, and a host of other nefarious pollutants from defendants’ facilities barrage the Tijuana River, its Estuary, the Pacific Ocean, and the Imperial Beach beachfront, contaminating those natural resources, stigmatizing the beachfront as unclean and unsafe, and sickening members of the public who use the Tijuana River Valley, the beach, and the ocean for recreation,” the cities claim. >click to read<16:52
Atlantic salmon-farming company sues Washington state to keep its Port Angeles site open
Cooke Aquaculture Pacific has filed a lawsuit seeking to continue running its Atlantic salmon farm in Port Angeles. The suit, filed Thursday in Clallam County Superior Court, declares that Hilary Franz, commissioner of public lands, erred in revoking the company’s lease to operate the Port Angeles farm. Franz on Dec. 15 demanded Cooke shut down the farm and remove the fish and equipment. There are nearly 700,000 Atlantic salmon at the farm. click here to read the story 15:03 
Charged with illegal fishing, Mi’kmaw man seeks to redefine Supreme Court’s Marshall decision
Exactly 18 years after the Supreme Court of Canada issued a clarification of its ruling on Indigenous peoples’ right to fish, a Mi’kmaw fisherman from New Brunswick’s lawsuit against the Crown will be in court — hoping to clear it up again. Legal counsel for Joseph Hubert Francis of Elispogtog First Nation in New Brunswick will appear in Halifax Federal Court Friday for the first part of the lawsuit filed in March of this year. click here to read the story 09:16
Eastport boatbuilder required to auction boat molds
A settlement agreement between the boatbuilding firm Millennium Marine USA and the Washington County government includes auctioning off four boat molds used by the company. The Quoddy Tides (click here) reported that the county purchased the molds for use by the company, with the help of $524,000 in U.S. Economic Development Agency grant funds. The molds will be auctioned for a minimum price of $15,000. click here to read the story 08:32
New Mississippi rule on oysters not based on science, Vietnamese group says in lawsuit
A lawsuit alleges the state’s ban on basket dredges for harvesting oysters was illegally based on “personal opinion and conjecture” and erodes the livelihood of Vietnamese American fishers. Thao Vu and the Mississippi Coalition for Vietnamese-American Fisher Folks are suing the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources over a ban its Commission on Marine Resources recommended. The ban went in effect Sept. 1. The lawsuit, filed Oct. 16 in Harrison County Chancery Court in Biloxi, is appealing the ban. The DMR went against state seafood laws that say fishery management plans and conservation efforts must be based on “the best scientific information available,” according to the civil complaint. click here to read the story 10:27
Baffin Fisheries Coalition launches $1.4M lawsuit against ex-CEO
The Baffin Fisheries Coalition (BFC) is suing its former CEO Garth Reid for allegedly defrauding the company of $1.4 million. The lawsuit, filed in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, alleges Reid was building on private land he owned in Winterton, N.L., and invoiced the work to BFC and its subsidiary Niqitaq Fisheries (NFL) — funneling goods and services through a construction company in Quebec. The lawsuit says Reid, who was CEO at the time, claimed the work was for a project in Pond Inlet, Nunavut. He was terminated two weeks ago. click here to read the story 10:57
Environmental groups suing Trump administration for extending red snapper season
Two environmental groups are suing the Trump administration for stretching the red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico. The federal government said the economic benefit from allowing weekend fishing this summer by recreational anglers in federal waters outweighs the harm to the red snapper species, which is still recovering from disastrous overfishing. Gulf state officials had lobbied for and praised the change, but the lawsuit says the decision violated several laws by ignoring scientific assessments, promoting overfishing, and failing to follow required procedures. It was filed Monday for the Ocean Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund. click here to read the story 13:13
Lawsuit seeks to protect whales, turtles from California gillnets
Oceana filed a lawsuit seeking to force U.S. fisheries managers to implement plans for restricting the number of whales and turtles permitted to be inadvertently snared in drift gillnets used for catching swordfish off California’s coast. The proposed rule, endorsed in 2015 by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, would place numerical limits on “bycatch” of whales and other marine creatures, and suspend swordfish gillnet operations if any of the caps are exceeded. The regulation was expected to gain final approval from the National Marine Fisheries Service. But it was withdrawn last month after the Commerce Department agency determined the cost to the commercial fishing industry outweighed conservation benefits, agency spokesman Michael Milstein said on Thursday. click here to read the story 17:11 Geoff Shester, a senior scientist at Oceana, who was “furious” when he found out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had decided to against adopting the rule. (lmao!) click here to read 17:13
A fisherman’s tale of fighting Uncle Sam
We’re probably going well off the beaten path on this one, but I wanted to draw your attention to a lawsuit which has been percolating in the system since 2015 and may be coming to the Supreme Court later this year. It involves a small volume fisherman who is fighting back against onerous regulations from the Department of Commerce which are threatening to put him (and so many other family operations) out of business. David Goethel is in the fight of his life because new government regulations are costing him more per day than he can generally earn in profit from his fishing operation. Cause of Action Institute (CoAI) is working on this case and provides the details. click here to read the story 11:45
