Law

An anti-trust lawsuit, naming The Pacific Group as defendants, was filed in Federal court. A copy of the complaint is made available here.

Fund-raising has begun in earnest to support the federal lawsuit filed last month on behalf of fishing interests throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states — all challenging the constitutionality of Amendment 16, the new management system for the New England groundfishery.

The Port of New Bedford through the city's Harbor Development Commission will manage the American Seafood Defense Fund, according to an announcement made Wednesday.

At least "$50,000 to $60,000" will be needed assuming the plaintiffs win at the U.S. District Court level, according to Pamela Lafreniere, a New Bedford lawyer who is co-counseling the lawsuit with Gloucester's Stephen Ouellette.

Lefreniere said the legal defense fund had about half the needed base.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

A national campaign to raise funds to support the fight against commercial fisheries sector management and catch shares has been launched and will be overseen by the port of New Bedford, the city announced today.

The newly created American Seafood Defense Fund will support a federal lawsuit filed last month by New Bedford and Gloucester, the state’s two largest fishing ports, together with private fishing interests from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and North Carolina. The suit challenges regulations that came into effect on May 1, and names the Administrator of NOAA and the Secretary of Commerce as defendants.

The newly created fund will be managed by New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission with the commision’s executive director, Kristin Decas, leading fund-raising efforts.

The lawsuit opposes sector management, a version of NOAA’s “catch share” national management initiative, which fishing officials say could force commercial boat owners out of business and shrink the city’s fleet from 600 active vessels down to as few as 100 to 200.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

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Legal issues linger around the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program, touching on federal standards for allocation of fishing privileges and two major components that have yet to be implemented in any of the other 14 catch share programs around the nation.

Both components — processor quota shares and binding price arbitration — drew questions from the U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division, which recommended in 2003 and in 2004 that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration not adopt either measure for the Alaska crab fishery.

Captains and crew who received about 36 percent of the vessel catch pre-rationalization feel they were disenfranchised in the initial allocation process and say the council's share distribution of 97 percent to vessel owners, 3 percent to captains and nothing to the crew did not recognize their historical participation in the crab fishery and violate the Magnuson-Stevens Act requirement that any quota allocation must be "fair and equitable."

Read the Alaska Journal of Commerce story in full

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — The New Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce is endorsing the federal lawsuit that challenges new fishing regulations, saying the new rules are a threat to the local economy.

Last month, the state's two biggest fishing ports — New Bedford and Gloucester — joined a legal case in an attempt to stymie the switch to commercial fisheries sector management and catch shares.

The chamber's Board of Directors voted unanimously in favor of supporting the lawsuit last week.

Read the complete SouthCoastToday.com story

 

 

The director of the state's Division of Marine Fisheries said Thursday the administration might decide in as little as a week whether to join New Bedford's federal lawsuit over tough new fishing regulations.

Paul Diodati told The Standard-Times, "I don't think it's a matter of a single organization or agency to make the call," but rather a collaborative decision.

"The commonwealth has been down the road several times in recent years, entering lawsuits against the federal government," he said. The results, he said, have been mixed.

State Rep. William M. Straus, D-Mattapoisett, chairman of the Environmental and Natural Resources Committee, met with Diodati on Thursday afternoon along with Mary Griffin, commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, and David Cash, assistant secretary of Environmental and Energy Affairs, to talk about the state's intentions.

In mid-May, Gov. Deval Patrick told The Standard-Times the decision was in the hands of Attorney General Martha Coakley, but since then the consensus has been that Coakley's role will be to proceed as directed by the client in the issue, which would be Diodati's department.

Patrick told The Standard-Times at the time of his visit that he had told Coakley, "I think it's a good idea" that the state join New Bedford and Gloucester in the lawsuit.

Read the full story in SouthCoastToday.com

 

 

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Times, NOAA refused to explicitly clarify the status of Dale J. Jones, the longtime oceans police chief who became the galvanizing figure in the scandal as it broke in phases in January, then again in March before two House oversight subcommittees.

The agency said it had received a completed report on document shredding by Jones from the Commerce Department inspector general but was withholding it because of its possible relevance in an "enforcement" action.

The agency also deflected a series of questions filed in the Times' Freedom of Information Act request, which sought a copy of the IG's findings, Jones' status — including whether he is still on a government payroll — the status of Jones' top assistant and "any other personnel moves" within the Office of Law Enforcement.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

The New England fishing industry's struggle with Obama administration fisheries policy shifted focus Wednesday from the political to the legal arena.

Gloucester and New Bedford — the nation's legendary fishing ports which are represented by core members of the Obama congressional majority — together with a broad coalition of business interests from New Hampshire to North Carolina have filed suit against the federal government.

At a briefing Wednesday for about 30 industry representatives in New Bedford, co-litigators Stephen Ouellette of Gloucester and Pamela LaFreniere for New Bedford announced that U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel had been assigned the case filed earlier this month; they said the case will be proposed for fast-tracking.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Representatives of some of the nation’s largest fishing ports, fishermen and businesses – including plaintiffs from Rhode Island – have filed suit in a Massachusetts United States District Court against the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The plaintiffs claim they have been adversely affected by Amendment 16 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, which became effective on May 1.

Those filing suit in a complaint filed on Sunday include the city of New Bedford, considered to be the country’s largest port in terms of the value of fish caught.

The following day, the city of Gloucester joined the suit. Another complainant, the American Alliance of Fishermen and their Communities, (AAFC), represents the interest of local commercial fishermen and their communities.  The Rhode Island based organization is named as a plaintiff. The AAFC is a non-profit organization representing all who are a part of the fishing industry  It was created to challenge Amendment 16.

Read the complete story at The Narragansett Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four and a half months after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for all communications that led to the controversial and later reversed decision to sharply reduce scallop allocations, New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang was informed that Federal administrators would not fully comply with the request.

The New Bedford Standard Times reports that four boxes containing almost 11,000 pages of documentation from NOAA arrived at New Bedford City Hall, but Mayor Scott Lang feels the Feds may be withholding the most revealing and crucial information.

In a cover letter accompanying the documents, Eric Schwaab, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that 2,880 pages were withheld pursuant to federal laws that protect agency memorandums or letters that would "not be available to a party in litigation with the agency." Another 80 pages are specifically protected under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the letter said.

But Lang said that such a decision is typically made by a judge, not by one of the parties in a dispute, and that Commerce is overstepping by denying them to the city.

Mayor Lang described the Department's response as containing "everything they want us to see and nothing they don't." He said Commerce is treating those documents like top secret information about nuclear weapons or CIA operatives when they are about shellfish.     

Read the story in the Standard-Times 

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