Law

January 8, 2015 — The delta smelt may be a small fish with a short life, but it has spawned a decades-long legal battle over water in California. At issue has been a series of orders under the Endangered Species Act that at times reduce water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to San Joaquin Valley growers and urban Southern California.

Citing the severe state drought, lawyers for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider a strict federal rule from the 1970s that calls for curtailing the water diversions to protect the threatened delta smelt and other imperiled species regardless of the cost to humans and the economy.

The reduced pumping "has had a huge impact," said Bob Muir, a district spokesman. Over the last five years, state officials say pumping has been reduced 10% to 30% each year to keep more fresh water in the delta, the only place in the world where the tiny native smelt is found.

In their appeal, the district's lawyers said the amount of water that was withheld during the winter of 2012-13 "would have been enough to supply the entire San Diego region this year."

The justices will meet Friday to consider a long list of pending appeals; the California water dispute is raised in two appeals, one from a coalition of water agencies and the second from Central Valley growers.

Read the full story from the LA Times

 

January 8, 2015 — Coast Guard crews are searching for an overdue Big Coppitt Key commercial fish dealer who pleaded guilty in an illegal spiny lobster harvesting case last month.

Dennis Dallmeyer, 67, was supposed to return to Stock Island by sunset Tuesday, said Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Max Franco. A Sea Tow crew first found his 25-foot Mako center console with the keys in the ignition after responding to a emergency Coast Guard broadcast late Tuesday night, adrift about eight miles south of Key West near navigational Marker 32, known colloquially as "Toppino," Franco said.

The Coast Guard began searching for cellphone pings in areas where Dallmeyer was known to fish. It then instructed Sea Tow to go a general area where it found recent cellphone activity, Franco said. He added that there was no direct distress call made by Dallmeyer from the boat.

Sea Tow found the Mako taking on water and did not see Dallmeyer, so they left the area, said company dispatcher Tanya Ross.

Dallmeyer was believed to be alone and out for a quick fishing trip, Franco said.

Read the full story from from the Key West Citizen

 

December 22, 2014 — Benny Miller of the New Orleans-based Louisiana Seafood Exchange isn’t happy with BP’s recent decision to fight penalties for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster that crippled the region’s economically vital seafood industry.

“They’re crazy if they think they can get away without paying just because oil prices are down,” said the general manager of the seafood wholesaler, which is involved in litigation against the oil giant.

Less than two weeks after a south Louisiana commercial fishing ground was reopened more than four years after one of the largest offshore oil spills in history, British oil giant is asking the federal government to lower its civil penalty, citing the recent steep drop in global oil prices. 

The news comes as BP is trying to find as many ways possible to reduce its lingering oil spill liability. The company has taken a pretax charge of $43 billion to cover all spill costs, according to its latest regulatory filing. The money includes covering a federal civil penalty of up to $18 billion based on the amount of oil spilled, money that would go to the federal government.

Read the full story from International Business Times

December 19, 2014 — Oil spill claims administrator Patrick Juneau will begin the process of paying out a second, $500 million round of payments to seafood workers starting next week. But he warned it could be several months before workers see the money.

In a statement Wednesday (Dec. 17), Juneau said the first step is to notify all seafood workers who qualify for a payment under this round. The distribution process is expected to continue through mid-July 2015.

"Eligible claimants should begin receiving notices next week for their supplemental distribution," Juneau said. "However, the required notification, appeal, and payment process will take several months to complete."

Juneau said some claimants might be required to provide additional documentation in order to receive payment. He said the claims office would provide more details of the steps required to receive additional payments in coming months.

Read the full story from The Times-Picayune

 

NEW ORLEANS — December 9, 2014 — The Supreme Court is leaving in place BP’s multibillion-dollar settlement with lawyers for businesses and residents over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting the London-based oil giant’s arguments that lower courts misinterpreted settlement terms and put BP on the hook to pay inflated and bogus claims by businesses.

The court’s decision makes the economic and property damage settlement final, starting a six-month deadline for filing claims, said plaintiffs’ attorney Joe Rice of Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Read the full story from The Boston Globe

 

November 20, 2014 — Environmental groups are suing the National Marine Fisheries Service to challenge a new rule for fishing bigeye tuna, a popular species for sushi and fish steaks.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Honolulu on Thursday says the regulation undermines international efforts to end overfishing of bigeye.

The complaint says the rule invents separate catch limits for American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. The lawsuit says each U.S. territory can then allocate half of its catch limit to Hawaii-based longline fishing vessels.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

PORT HAWKESBURY, N.S. — November 13, 2014 — Phillip Boudreau, wearing the green rubber boots of a fisherman and a teal baseball cap, took his speedboat out on the water near his Cape Breton home just before 6 a.m. on June 1, 2013.

It was lobster season and boats had been streaming out of Petit de Grat harbour since before sunrise.

One, called the Twin Maggies with a crew of three fishermen, lingered at the mouth of the harbour and then took deliberate aim at Mr. Boudreau’s red and white speedboat, according to Crown prosecutor Steve Drake.

It rammed the boat three times, he said. When the attack was over, the little speedboat was capsized and Mr. Boudreau lost to the sea.

“This case is about murder for lobster,” the prosecutor told a Nova Scotia Supreme Court jury on Thursday, the first day of the second-degree murder trial of one of the Twin Maggies’ crew.

Joseph James Landry has pleaded not guilty in the death of the 43-year-old fisherman. Mr. Landry, 67, of Little Anse, is one of four people charged in the case.

Read the full story from the National Post

November 11, 2014 — Three environmental groups have settled a lawsuit against New Jersey's Environmental Protection Department, clearing the way for the agency to rule on whether a southern New Jersey nuclear plant is doing enough to prevent unnecessary fish kills.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, New Jersey Sierra Club and New Jersey Environmental Federation settled their lawsuit Monday against the DEP, which said it would issue a draft discharge permit to PSE&G's Salem Nuclear Generating Station by June 30.

That will force the DEP to take a position on whether the facility's cooling water intake structures must be significantly upgraded to reduce fish kills.

Read the full story from the Associated Press here

November 10, 2014 — The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 makes a criminal out of anyone who “destroys … any record, document, or tangible object [emphasis added] with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation.” If the Supreme Court were to clarify the “tangible object” part of the law for John Yates, that could have an impact on the Marathon cases.

When is a fish more than just a fish?

That’s the question the Supreme Court is angling to answer. And its pending decision is already having ripple effects on two Boston Marathon bombing related cases: On Thursday, sentencing was delayed for two men convicted of impeding the investigation.

What’s this Yates case about?

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of John Yates, a Florida commercial fisherman. In 2007, state officials boarded Yates’ boat at sea and found he had caught 72 red groupers that were smaller than the federal legal minimum. They gave Yates a citation and told him to return to land with the fish.
But when he returned, officials found only 69 undersized grouper; three had been thrown overboard under Yates’s orders, a crewman admitted.

Read the full story from The Boston Globe

 

WASHINGTON — November 5, 2014 — Most of the justices seemed troubled by Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday about the prosecution of a Florida fisherman for throwing three undersize red grouper back into the Gulf of Mexico.

The fisherman, John L. Yates, was convicted of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a federal law aimed primarily at white-collar crime. The law imposes a maximum sentence of 20 years for the destruction of “any record, document or tangible object” in order to obstruct an investigation.

Mr. Yates’s primary argument was that fish are not the sort of tangible objects with which the law was concerned.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. seemed to agree. He asked what people would say “if you stopped them on the street and said, ‘Is a fish a record, document or tangible object?’ ”

Justice Antonin Scalia said, “I don’t think you’d get a polite answer.”

But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said it would be odd to let Mr. Yates throw fish overboard, destroying evidence, but to allow him to be prosecuted for tearing up photographs of the fish.

Read the full story at the New York Times