Suing to regain extensive legal fees, two victims of miscarried federal fisheries justice — the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and former New Bedford scalloper Larry Yacubian — found their cases assigned to the same judges who presided over prosecutions that shamed NOAA and brought Cabinet-level apologies and reparations.
The assignment of the claims for legal fees to the original judges from the Coast Guard's administrative law judge system was first reported Friday on the news website Saving Seafood in a report by freelance journalist Christian Bourge.
The auction expenses case was assigned to Administrative Law Judge Walter J. Brudzinski; the Yacubian case was assigned to ALJ Parlen L. McKenna.
Both judges played controversial roles in cases that were derided and picked apart by a special investigative master working for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
The rematching of judges with the victims to determine legal fees was widely condemned Monday by defenders of the two businesses. Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank also described the decision as inexplicable in a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.