NOAA has moved to shift the latest legal tangles surrounding overturned cases against the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and a former New Bedford scalloper out of the hands of the U.S. Coast Guard's administrative law judge system.
In separate motions filed with the Coast Guard, Charles L. Green, deputy assistant general counsel for enforcement and litigation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, wrote that "staying the matter" of legal costs now being sought by the auction and scalloper Lawrence Yacubian until a new administrative law judge system can be chosen to is appropriate.
Green wrote Friday to three Coast Guard ALJs that he was filing the motion "out of an abundance of caution and to avoid further distractions."
The motions require action by the judges: Chief Judge Joseph J. Ingolia, who is in charge of the case for costs filed by former scalloper Yacubian since Judge Parlen McKenna, the trial judge, recused himself from further involvement, and Judge Michael J. Devine and Walter J. Brudzinski, who heard cases against the auction and remain assigned to the pending hearings in which the auction is seeking to recover legal costs it spend fighting enforcement actions for which the Commerce Department has formally apologized.
The decision to seek removal of the cases from the Coast Guard System was made public just as Rear Adm. Frederick J. Kenney, judge advocate general for the Coast Guard, was writing to the Times Monday to defend the performance of his service's legal system.
"We appreciate the fact that NOAA leadership has the confidence in the Coast Guard ALJ system to allow cases to be continue to be heard by our judges until a new system is identified," Kenney wrote.
Green's motion regarding the auction cases went to Devine, who presided over the second of three cases — known widely as the "one fish case" — and Brudzinski, who presided over the pretrial wrangling over a third set of NOAA allegations, with more than 50 counts based of self reported landings mostly of disputed yellowtail flounder.
The cases were settled with no admission of wrongdoing on the part ot the auction in March 2010. But even after Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, acting on the findings of a special judicial master, apologized and paid reparations, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco still filed an order calling for the Ciulla family to shut down the auction for 15 days, reverting to a former settlement. Read More
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