The Gloucester Seafood Display Auction has won the right to reams of documents generated by federal fisheries law enforcement agents, and read their internal exchanges while a high-stakes case of allegedly illegal brokering was being developed around catch reports supplied by the auction itself.
The theory of the defense involving the e-mail messages is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's case against the auction is a form of selective prosecution, according to the order issued to NOAA to produce the documents.
"(The auction's) argument is not selective prosecution in the Constitutional sense," administrative law Judge Walter J. Brudzinski wrote his Dec. 15 order to Deirdre L. Casey, the case attorney at NOAA's regional offices in Gloucester.
"(The auction's) argument simply put is that NOAA has never charged another fish house with this type of violation even though the same boats in question landed fish at several other fish houses," the judge added.