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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 9
May 2006
LIS lobstermen accept $12.5 million settlement
CENTER ISLIP, NY – The spring weather that is starting to warm up the water on Long Island Sound is also bringing something to warm up the pockets of lobstermen who saw their fishery destroyed six years ago.
Just six days before trial was scheduled to begin in a lawsuit filed against Cheminova Inc., the attorney for the three Long Island Sound lobstermen who filed the federal class action announced that they had settled the case for $12.5 million. Cheminova Inc. is the manufacturer of a malathion-based chemical sprayed in September 1999 to control mosquitoes suspected of carrying the West Nile virus.
If the US District Court judge hearing the case approves the settlement, some 240 New York and Connecticut lobstermen will be entitled to share in the proceeds. In December 2004, the lobstermen settled with two other manufacturers for $3.75 million –$16.25 million in all.
Legal fees and expenses will substantially reduce the funds the lobstermen will actually recover. Lawyers representing the plaintiffs will ask the court to approve fees of up to 40 percent of the total settlement, plus an additional $500,000 for the expenses.
In addition, the lobstermen have agreed to contribute $100,000 from the settlement to the Lobster Institute. Headed by Dr. Bob Bayer at the University of Maine, the Lobster Institute did the first scientific examination of the causes of the massive die-off of the Long Island Sound lobster resource in 1999.
Three fishermen, Nick Crismale, of Connecticut, James E. Fox and John H. Makowsky, both of New York, filed the suit in 2000 after the Long Island Sound lobster fishery collapsed in the fall of 1999. They believed that the cause was the aerial spraying of pesticides by municipalities along the sound during September of that year in an effort to control the West Nile Virus and that the effects of the spraying were multiplied by heavy rains that occurred just days afterwards.
While the settlement was announced on April 18, it will take some time before the fishermen in the class see any money. The judge will first have to determine weather the settlement proposed is fair. The fairness hearing is tentatively scheduled for June 30.
Assuming the court approves, proceeds of the settlement will be distributed among New York and Connecticut lobstermen who can prove, using information from their federal tax returns, that they lost income from lobstering. The money will be distributed using a formula based on each lobsterman’s share of the total loss of income claimed.
Lobstermen who haven’t already opted out of the class action suit will receive notice of the proposed settlement. The notice calls for any objections to the settlement to be filed by May 31. It also calls for lobstermen who haven’t already filed proofs of claim in connection with the earlier, partial settlement to do so now.
According to the lawyer for the lobstermen, Gladstone N. Jones, the two settlements, together with approximately $6.5 million in federal and state disaster relief funds, mean New York and Connecticut lobstermen will have recovered some $22.5 million dollars as a consequence of the lobster die-off.
In the complaint that Crismale, Fox, and Makowsky filed to start the class action suit, they asked for $125 million in actual damages for the class, and also punitive damages.
Speaking a few days before the proposed settlement was announced, Crismale said he would have liked to have seen the case brought to trial, but that some lobstermen who suffered losses as a result of the fishery collapse needed the money now, not at some indefinite time in the future.
Stephen Rappaport
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