Subscribe to RSS FeedIt's Mother's Day today! Best wishes all around on that front. Keeping in the spirit of things, I went trawling for cases in which mothers and boats intersected. These are some of the highlights I found:
A scheming son apparently transferred a boat to his mother for a fraction of its value as part of an alleged fraud. Mother and son tried to assert parent-child privilege so that she wouldn't have to testify against him. The court didn't buy it.
One of the boats involved in a bankruptcy proceeding was named: "Thanks-Mom."
There's the couple that kept buying boats by trading in their existing boat and using other funds to make up the purchase price -- apparently good old Mom kept lending them the money, but it was never repaid.
There's more, but reviewing cases like this can make you a little sad. When people are in Court it's usually as a result of some unpleasant incident be it a crime, a death or what have you. I flipped through hundreds of maritime case summaries in trying to put this entry together in the hope of coming up with something sweet and light that might have yielded a grin or two.
Instead I found page after page of mothers filing lawsuits, making claims, and trying to protect their children and family. I think it's fair to say that mothers have shaped the contours of maritime law in many ways.
In fact, mothers were at the helm of some highly influential decisions in maritime law (Miles v. Apex Marine, Yamaha v. Calhoun, etc.). And so, in casting off this entry, I'd suggest that without a mother's passion, we'd all be sailing very different legal seas which is all the more reason to make this Mother's Day a good one!
Underway and making way.
--- JKF
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