Attorneys in Gloucester and New Bedford are engaged in separate struggles with NOAA and the Coast Guard administrative law judge system to obtain more than a half million dollars combined in legal fees for two clients.
The clients — the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and former New Bedford-based scalloper Larry Yacubian, now out of the fishing business, were harmed badly enough by law enforcement excesses to warrant reparations and elicit a Cabinet-level apology.
The reparations and apology last May 17 were accompanied by an order by the Commerce Secretary to terminate NOAA's contract for using the Coast Guard ALJ system and to make a fresh start with the fishing industry using another agency's judicial system to try contested cases.
But NOAA initially chose to keep the Coast Guard system in place for existing cases, so the effort to recover fees by the Auction and Yacubian remained in the system in which the injustices warranting apologies were done.
Yacubian's lawyer, Pamela Lafreniere, pursuing a different tact, filed a motion Tuesday to transfer the unresolved claim for more than $300,000 in legal fees from the Coast Guard ALJ system into the EPA's judicial system.
In a motion to Coast Guard ALJ Bruce T. Smith, Lafreniere wrote that NOAA should have honored Locke's order "to terminate the Coast Guard ALJ contract in order to reset NOAA's relationship with the regulated community."
NOAA filed a motion to stay all matters in the Coast Guard ALJ system pending the arrival of the replacement system. Referring to the rulings by the judges against the auction since the motion to stay was filed,
Lafreniere said "two Coast Guard ALJs havee ignored the language in the agency's motion' and "instead used a contorted analysis" remain in charge of the auction's claims.
In contrast, she said no Coast Guard judge had issued an order on her client's motion for legal fees.
Read the complete Motion to Transfer
Read the complete Motion to Stay
Read the Letter from Representives Barney Frank and John Tierney to Sectretary Locke
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times