May 19, 2017 — They lost in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire last summer and failed to have that decision overturned in federal appeals court in Boston this spring.
Still, New Hampshire groundfisherman David Goethel and his legal team may not be done in their legal challenge of the federal government’s ability to shift the costs of at-sea monitoring to groundfishermen.
“We’re still assessing all of our legal options at this point,” said Julie Smith, one of the lawyers from Washington D.C.-based Cause of Action Institute that has represented Goethel and Northeast Fishing Sector 13 in the initial federal lawsuit and appeal.
Smith declined to be more specific, but clearly the options are limited:
Goethel and his lawyers could swing for the fences and petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case, hoping it would overturn the April decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals upholding the judgment in the original lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Concord, New Hampshire.
Petitioning the highest court in the land with a writ of certiorari — which would compel the lower court to deliver its record for review — is not exactly a high-percentage play.
The Supreme Court, according to the website of the federal court system, accepts only 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review each year.