Sinking Boats

Sara and I have been back from New Zealand for over a week, our photos are coming up soon. But some work related stuff couldn't wait.

Since I've been in American Samoa representing the Port, two marine vessels have sunk in the harbor. The problem is American Samoa has no laws dealing with abandoned or derelict marine vessels. Thus its difficult for the government to be proactive about dealing with these problem ships. To help alleviate this situation I drafted a proposed statute that lays out the procedure for noticing, removing and disposing of abandoned boats. The proposed statute is adapted from Alaska's Title 30, Chapter 30. After a bit of lobbying by the Coast Guard, the Director of Marine & Wildlife Resources, the Director of the Department of Port Administration and myself the proposed bill is scheduled for a hearing on Thursday morning.

The Attorney General has asked me to attend and testify on behalf of the Office of the Attorney General. I'm excited to see some action on this issue. With less than two months left on my contract, I'm eager to leave American Samoa with a better legal means of dealing with dangerous ships. I'll give an update after the hearing.

A Win for Sanctuaries in AmSam

Too often in law, the results of your court victories don't come to much, a paper judgment that will never get paid, a dismissal that bounces around on appeal for years or motions that the judge sits on until they forget about it. So for once it's nice to see a postive, actual result for one of my cases. Back in December 2011, I had to defend the America Samoa Government's ability to revoke the clearance of a fishing boat accused of pollution violations in an injunction hearing. Maybe all the news outlets didn't get my name right, but it was a nice win in a preliminary injunction hearing on only a few days notice.

Jump ahead a year, and now ASG is looking to receive half-a-million dollars for its Nation Marine Sanctuaries Foundation from the criminal conviction of that pollution case. So there's a few years of funding for the Marine Sanctuaries of American Samoa that I had a small hand in securing. Yay!

Pese Video

Video of our pese performance got posted on You Tube. Hope this takes some of the sting out of the 49ers game from earlier today...

Case in the News

One of my cases has been making the news in this otherwise quiet territory. It's even been catching some media attention in New Zealand and other places. Looks like resolution is close, at least on the American Samoa side of the matter, so it'll be back to the day in and day out of litigation here again.

Halloween and Melbourne Cup

Monday started out a little different from a usual week. Sara and I were walking up the stairs toour office when we saw the Commissioner of the Workmen's Compensation Commission and one a member of her staff. They were carrying several large tin trays of food up to their office. After engaging in a little conversation, we were invited to come by their office at 11 for lunch. I said I would come if my trial that was scheduled for that morning didn't go.

Turns out the attorney for the plaintiff couldn't reach his client and therefore got the trial taken off calendar. This was the third trial date set in this case, sigh. Litigating in Samoa can be a little frustrating, but with my morning freed up, I was able to get back to the office much earlier than I anticipated. After using the rest the morning drafting discovery responses, I chatted Sara and suggested we go over to the Workmen's Comp Commission Office in the Executive Office Building.

We walked down the stairs and over to the WCC and came in and said hello to the staffer at the front desk. She welcomed us in and had the Commissioner come out and greet us. The Commissioner's husband was also there (who also happens to be the judge I was in front of earlier that morning).

Together we walked over to another department and were greeted to a number of government employees in costume starting to set up some 6 huge tables for food. We were introduced to the crowd, many of whom were in costume (and a large percentage of those were dressed as doctors or nurses, a statement on how the scariest thing in AmSam is the hospital), and were welcomed to their lunch. After a few pictures and fielding some requests for me to take pictures with the young ladies who work in that office, we were ready for the meal. Each person there had brought a large tray of meat or platter of dishes. There were several portions of pig, corned beef, pizzas, chicken, fish and chow mien. Sara and I were whisked to the front of the line as "guests."

Being the finicky-diet-people that we are, Sara and I had to work hard to put together a full plate of food we could eat. Selective picking at the chow mien and macaroni and cheese we were able to serve up our plates. We then sat down at a counter that usually handles HR issues for the American Samoa Government employees and had our lunch. I had to bite my tongue a little, since I ended up sitting next to the judge that I'd appeared in front of that morning, no ex parte communications can sneak into the conversation. We enjoyed our meal and managed to slip out before we were piled high with take-out trays filled with more food. It was an unexpected Halloween surprise and let us put off eating our left overs until the next day.

Later that day, our Aussie friends invited us over to their house. They told us to be there at 4:30 sharp. The timeliness was necessary since we were gathering to witness the running of the Melbourne Cup. We headed out of the office at four and drove out to Coconut Point for the event. There was a $5 buy-in for the race. With 24 horses scheduled to run, each of us there got to pick two horses out of a cap with the winning horse paying out $25, 2nd place $15, 3rd place $5 and last place $5. We drew lots and settled in for the race. With such a large field, it made for some relatively entertaining 3 minutes of racing.

It came down to a photo finish, by the tip of its lip Dunaden won the Melbourne Cup. This netted me 1st prize, as I'd drawn that horse as one of my two horses from the pot. This gave me another win in my streak. Not bad, I'll take it, hopefully some of this luck will carry through to the trials I've been having.

For the rest of the evening we were treated to some Samoan Halloween celebration. We've heard horror stories about bus loads of kids from all over the island being trucked into the government housing for contract workers. There are also incidents of teens pushing their way into people's houses to get candy. Out at Coconut Point it was pretty mellow and most of the kids' costumes were adorable. Plus they all sang "trick or treat, trick or treat, give me something good to eat, au mai si, o'u lole fa'amolemole, Happy Halloween." It made for a nice evening out on our Australian friends' porch.

Village Fisheries

Despite the fact that we almost exclusively write about our recreational activities, Sara and I do actually go to work on this island. Our day jobs keep us pretty busy from 7:30am to 4pm, the bruising schedule of working in a Samoan government office. It's a rough life in the tropics, but someone needs to live it.

So after a pre-trial conference this morning, I got to get away from the office/dungeon that most civil litigators are confined to for a little bit to statutory explanations for conference the at the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources ("DMWR"). DMWR is implementing a program where the coastal villages can set up their own marine reserves and establish their own fishing regulations that both the village and DMWR enforcement officers can enforce. I got asked to attend this meeting by one of the Samoans I met at the talofa barbecue I went to last weekend for a departing member of DMWR.

The talk sounded a little on the legal-nerd end of the spectrum, just the kind of thing for an attorney on the environmental kick back on the mainland. The meeting turned out to be interesting in a few, non-legal ways. The whole events started with a buffet breakfast, I caught more than a few looks for not eating a big plate from the available food. I didn't realize it was going to be catered and had a meal before commuting into Pago Pago. The meeting then kicked off with a hymn sung in Samoan and was followed by two prayers, also in Samoan, led by different members of the group. The group of village mayors, or matais from the participating villages, then gave reports on the enforcement they had done in the last year as a part of the program. This whole presentation was, also in Samoan, so I gathered little outside of there were a lot of "thank you's" and they referred to the "rules" a bunch. Knowing only about two-dozen Samoan words will hold you back in this context.

After these presentations I got up and did my presentation on the rules, the first part of the program to be in English. This was followed by a break for brunch, which consisted of a buffet of the left overs from breakfast along with some rice, beef stew and meat pies. Again, I caught some looks for turning down a soda and a big plate of food at 10:20 in the morning. Participating in Samoa events is calorie intensive.

The DMWR enforcement officers then did more explanations of the fisheries program and some specifics from the regulations, again, also in Samoan. I had an easier time following these talks, since they had power point slides with the code sections and many of the legal terms had no practical Samoa translations so there would be acronyms and legal terms mixed in to the explanations.

This session went OK until the end. The events started to get side tracked when the matais started asking about creating village specific regulations. Most of the sought regulations involved closing the fishing to non-villagers. Unfortunately, I had to be the bearer of bad tidings and make it clear that any regulation passed by the village had to apply equally to the villages and outsiders. This upset some of the representatives. Apparently excluding everyone else seemed to be what most of them hoped to achieve. Sigh. Sometimes the hardest thing about being an attorney is telling people "no."

I hopefully conveyed it clearly enough to convince them that's not what the fisheries and marine sanctuary program was about, but a number of the representatives were still up in arms by the time this portion ended. Hopefully these hard feelings were smoothed over by the large lunch, I dashed out before the 3rd buffet of the morning got too far underway. The Samoans running the event caught me in the hallway when I was talking to a few biologists who work for DMWR and gave me a take-out tray piled with food. They must have assumed I was in dire need of food, since it was heaped with beef chow mien, battered and fried chicken, pork stir-fry, a fried banana, rice and two soft drinks. Too much food and most of it that's not in my diet. I ended up gaving it to one of the Samoans I work with.

We'll see if this program is a success, since these villages really are the front line for protecting these natural resources.

Oral Arguments

Thus far I've had a number of oral arguments in court, here in American Samoa. All have either been unopposed, or the issue was been pushed down the road by the justice/judge. I was eager to finally have a contested motion to argue this morning. I'd drafted and sent out my motion to compel last month. I'd spent a healthy part of yesterday afternoon drafting my arguments and rehearsing them. I knew my law, I knew what my opponent would argue and I had my counters ready. I was ready to go.

Sara reviewed my arguments and suggested I pair it down to a few broad strokes. Not wanting to lose out on the technical aspects of what individual objections were improper and the finer points of civil procedure I lopped off as much of the fat as I could part with. I needed those arguments to be on the record.

I show up for the hearing, this morning armed and ready. We sit down and the Chief Justice looks around and say "Start talking. What are we arguing?" I then launch into my carefully crafted treatise on civil discovery and why the other side owes me some answers. A minute in the justice interrupts me with "I'd rather listen with my eyes, this matter is taken under advisement." Cut and done.

Lesson learned, if you can't say it to the court within a few sentences, it's not going to get heard.

Post-Hearing

So not as much excitement as I'd hoped, the hearing went unopposed. Looks like I'll need to argue another one down the road. It was good to get into the courthouse and see the court in action. Plus I needed an excuse to wear my "formal attire."

Hearing

After 2+ years as an attorney, I've got my first opposed hearing tomorrow. Should be interesting to have to wear a Hawaiian print shirt, wood beads and flip flops to a court hearing. I'll have pictures and the results after tomorrow.