Boat owner, federal government seek to bar wrongful-death suit by family of woman who drowned after Boston Harbor crash

One day after the family of Jeanica Julce of Somerville sued the owner of the boat she was on just before she drowned - and the owner of another boat - both the boat owner and the federal government asked a federal government to reinstate her ban on lawsuits over the crash in state court, which she had lifted just last month.

In motions filed in US District Court yesterday, both Seaport resident Ryan Denver and the government cited admiralty law in urging US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs to at least partially reinstate her earlier stay of any suits in state court, although they cited different specific laws.

Denver, who hit a permanent navigational marker marking the boundary of deeper Boston Harbor water and the shallower Dorchester Bay, asked US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs to "alter or amend" her ruling last month allowing suits over the crash in state court, saying it would violate his rights under an 1851 "limitation of liability" law aimed at protecting ship owners by limiting the amount they might have to pay out after a disaster on the high seas over which they had no control to the value of whatever was left of their ship after the disaster.

In Denver's case, he says that means he should not have to pay out more than $50,000, which was all that was left of his 40-foot speedboat after the crash - and before State Police accidentally set it on fire while trying to shrink wrap it - his lawyers argue.

Denver's lawyers say lifting the stay would also make it harder for him - and Julce's family and the other people on the Make It Go Away who survived - to sue the Coast Guard for contributing to the crash.

Denver has argued he is totally blameless for the crash in part because he didn't hit the beacon - Daymarker 5 - on his way out of Boston Harbor to Quincy and he followed his exact path on his return trip, that the bottom exposed part of the structure was not illuminated and that the top part, which has a flashing light, was obscured by bright lights from two nearby vessels doing harbor dredging for the Army Corps of Engineers at the time.

Also, letting state lawsuits be brought would only lead to a confusing miasma of possibly conflicting rulings in different courts, they say:

Otherwise, a procedural quagmire will create substantive hash sapping the uniformity of maritime law and injecting res judicata confusion into the limitation case; prejudice Denver, leaving him without insurance proceeds to answer the USCG claim against him which cannot be adjudicated in state court, while also precluding him and the human claimants from pursuing the USCG in state court; thereby creating inefficient, multi-forum litigation of a multi-victim marine casualty and defeating concursus.

Julce's family, and survivors of the crash, or in nautical terms, "allision," however, argue that Denver caused the crash, that the limitation-of-liability law doesn't apply because he wasn't just the boat's owner, he was its captain, onboard at the time and he had had too much to drink.

In her ruling, Burroughs said that while the limitation case before her remains open, it's pretty obvious that Denver wasn't just a ship owner - he was the "master" of the craft at the time it crashed and so there is "no need for a stay here where the owner was at the helm and it is the negligence of the master, if any, that will drive liability rather than his actions as owner."

In its own motion, the US Attorney's office also asked Burroughs to change her order - but it cited different federal laws: The Rivers and Harbors Act and the Suits in Admiralty Act, which it says gives federal courts exclusive jurisdiction over maritime crashes, and under which it is seeking $300,000 from Denver for the damage the Coast Guard says he caused to the navigational structure.

The government argues that in particular, the Rivers and Harbors Act, which relates to infrastructure in harbors, such as navigational markers, takes precedence over the limitation-of-liability law.

Besides, if Denver or any of the people on the boat should sue the Coast Guard in state court, the government would only seek to have the case moved back into federal court, which would cause unnecessary delays in getting to a final determination of just how much liability Denver should be ordered to have.

To ensure the United States’ rights are protected so that it can prosecute its property damage claim and defend itself against Denver’s liability claims, and to promote judicial economy in determining liability for the accident, the United States requests this Court amend its Order and reinstate the injunction against state court proceedings so that the liability of all parties can be determined by this Court.