The Salty Barrister

I had my feet on a cooler, and something advertised as "frost brewed" in my hand. It was a Saturday afternoon and the five of us were sitting on the dock, talking nonsense and critiquing the boats pulling down the channel to one of the three marinas to our south. It was a Hatteras that got us on our feet. He'd cracked off a plane, but with bow high and a wake you could've surfed, powered down the channel. We waved and hooted at him to slow up, but he wasn't having it.

It was Billy's boat that got the worst of it with impact damage to the bow where the wake had driven it into the dock. It was fixable, but it'd be a week-long repair and a couple of thousand bucks. Billy wasn't too happy, but he settled down when I explained to him that the maritime law was on his side.

You see, that wake that rolls off the back of your boat and rushes away is generally your responsibility. In other words, when your wake causes damage, it's quite possible that you're going to be on the hook because a passing vessel typically owes a duty of reasonable care to appreciate the reasonable effect of its wake. So Billy took some pictures, wrote down the names of some characters who'd seen the event (aside from us), and filed it away as next week's project.

Later on, one of us got talking about how the choices you make in life have consequences. That's when Billy chimed up. He's right, I guess, that little maxim does get visibly manifested when a boat's wake chases its way to shore.

Underway and making way.

--- JKF

Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, the Summer solstice signals sailing. And whether it's a weekend event at the local yacht club, or an organized regatta with a sea of colored sails, the sailing season brings a slew of racing events.

Sailboat racing can be fiercely competitive. In the small boat arena, pushing the limits of the rules and occasionally running into your friendly competitor usually never gives rise to anything that a little wax and some elbow grease can't repair. On the other hand, when a couple of forty foot vessels careen into each other, it's a different story. Serious physical and personal injuries can and do arise.

Ok, so now this is where it gets interesting. If you've raced sailboats you know that one boat can "protest" another boat's actions. These protests are resolved before a committee following the race in accordance with established rules unique to sailboat racing. And you know what, more and more courts consider the findings of the protest committee binding in a subsequent civil litigation.

Point being, if your boat is found at fault by the protest committee in a collision that involved injuries and vessel damage, your prospects of being able to get another ruling on the issue at Court may not be that good. Of course, each circumstance is unique and results could vary depending on the jurisdiction in which the dispute is pending, but it's something to keep in mind.

So the next time, you see someone saunter into the protest committee hearing with beer in hand, jocular smile, and disinterested air, think about pulling him aside and reminding him that the committee's findings might last a lot longer than the season's racing results!

Underway and making way.

--- JKF

It'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

The first day of the blog.  I have an image of wooden blocks being tugged free, blog tilting toward channel, and then a hurtling rush ending with a spray of water.  In other words, we just got launched and we're bobbing cheerfully next to the pier.
I'm a maritime attorney with a practice in New York and offices up and down the East Coast.  In fact, we're just opening an office in Newport, RI.  I grew up in Rhode Island so I have a soft-spot for its coastline, Del's, Johnny-Cakes, the whole bit.  I like driving boats and did so commercially up through college.  I still keep my license current in case one day, as I tell my wife sometimes after a couple of beers, I decide to leave the office life behind!  My thanks to Safe/Sea for inviting me to post my occasional musings, and my aim is to share some of the legal oddities that the maritime law offers and which make the practice interesting.

-Underway & Making Way,
JKF