October 1, 2014 — When a Tappahannock driver for a Lottsburg seafood company was arrested in January for transporting undersized oysters across state lines, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources called the arrest and subsequent seizure “one of the largest oyster cases in recent years.”
Less than six months later, a Maryland court ruled that the state’s evidence could not be used to prosecute the driver.
On Jan. 15 of this year, 17 Maryland Natural Resources Police officers in Easton, Md. pulled over a tractor-trailer owned by Lottsburg seafood dealer Cowart Seafood Corp. and arrested driver Rhoderick Newman of Tappahannock for multiple counts of possession of undersized oysters and one count of
attempting to transport undersized oysters to Virginia. Maryland authorities also seized the truck and its 187 bushels of oysters, with all but one bushel containing oysters that were undersized.
According to a Maryland DNR spokesperson, Newman faced possible fines of $187,000; the company faced a loss of the truck.
But within 30 days of the District Court of Talbot County, MD ruling that the evidence was unusable in prosecuting Newman for alleged violations of Maryland’s oyster laws, the Office of the Maryland Attorney General announced it was ending its prosecution of the driver, thus ending the case.
“I am, of course grateful Cowart Seafood has been vindicated,” Lake Cowart Jr., owner of Cowart Seafood, said in a press release submitted by his local lawyer, James C. Breeden, of Irvington. “I always feel a heavy responsibility to uphold the reputation of my family and Cowart Seafood for honest business.”
Cowart added in a recent phone interview with the Northern Neck News his and his business’s opinion that they “shouldn’t have been stopped to start with, but … that’s history now.”
Read the full story at Northern Neck News