A federal court judge Thursday set Feb. 9 as the date to hear oral arguments in the lawsuit against the U.S. Commerce Department by the mayors and fishing industries of New Bedford and Gloucester.
New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang said he was pleased at the relatively quick process that Judge Rya W. Zobel set down for the pretrial proceedings.
The major question between now and February is that of discovery: whether the plaintiffs will be allowed to interview under oath the top NOAA administrator, Jane Lubchenco, and four others involved in drafting Amendment 16, the groundfish regulations that codify "catch shares" and sector management in the Northeast fishery.
The government has until Sept. 23 to answer the plaintiff's motion, which was filed Thursday.
In the motion, the New Bedford attorneys wrote that "discovery is necessary to understand why the agency was so committed to ensuring the selection and imposition of a particular fishing management system known to cause serious and widespread harm, particularly when poorly designed and implemented in an unduly rushed manner without proper consideration of the alternatives, as in the case here, when such a system in itself does nothing to conserve fish or ensure optimum yields and when such system required state of the art, 'real time' data collection systems which did not exist.
"The requested depositions are necessary to fully disclose the bases for the agency's actions affecting an entire ecosystem at the center of an important public policy debate.
"The plaintiff, the city of New Bedford, contends that the agency has improperly skewed and influenced the administrative process to secure a predetermined outcome, and that these actions constitute bad faith and improper behavior justifying the depositions requested."