How to Handle the Aftermath of a Marine Casualty Incident

Vessel collisions on America’s busy inland waters have been a fact of life for a very long time. With towboats, barges, ferries, oceangoing vessels and recreational vessels all jockeying for position in limited space, collisions, and even more near misses, are bound to happen.

Most of these incidents involving professional mariners do not lead to suspension and revocation proceedings against the involved USCG licensed mariners, but, depending on the human and/or financial cost associated, some do.

Tugboats can get into accidents quite often

In many of those more serious casualties, the course of the proceedings is established very early on, usually when the first verbal statements are provided to authorities responding to the accident scene.

The collision case we will review here occurred several years ago but this type of incident would likely evolve the same way if it occurred today.

Passing Perils

The facts of the case are fairly common. Our policyholder was piloting a towboat pushing a flotilla of barges downstream when he encountered an inbound tanker. The captain of the towboat communicated with the state pilot aboard the towboat to arrange a port to port passing.

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All was progressing well until about two minutes later when the towboat’s captain contacted the pilot of the tanker informing him that his tow was breaking his range. The pilot aboard the tanker asked if he needed to take any actions to allow for a safer pass and, after a brief hesitation, received a negative response.

About a minute later, the towboat’s flotilla swung into the path of the tanker which collided with several of the barges resulting in three of them sinking.

Consequently, it was alleged that the towboat’s captain failed to properly communicate to the tanker’s pilot that his tow had swung out too far into the path of the inbound ship, limiting the vessel’s options to avoid the collision.

That allegation and subsequent interviews led the Coast Guard to bring a negligence charge against the towboat’s captain for not taking all necessary actions to avoid the collision as required by Navigation Rule 8. The Coast Guard further proposed a 12-month outright suspension of the towboat captain’s license in accordance with 46 USC 7703.

Apologies Don’t Help

The towboat’s owner did not agree with the Coast Guard’s conclusion and license suspension proposal, claiming in its Answer and Counterclaim to the tanker owner’s $3 million civil suit for damages that the ship’s pilot “violated one or more of the U.S. Inland Navigation Rules or other statutes or regulations involving marine safety or navigation thereby invoking the Pennsylvania Rule, requiring plaintiffs to prove that those faults could not have been the cause of the collision”.

While the two companies were litigating the case in civil court, the towboat’s captain emerged as the key figure in the case.

The fact that the Coast Guard seemingly concurred with the tanker company’s position that he and his flotilla were responsible for the collision made a successful license defense not only crucial to his ability to keep his license and continue working for the next year, but also to his company’s attempt to prevail in the $3 million civil action brought against it as a result of the collision.

The key question was: Why did Coast Guard investigators so quickly conclude that the collision was the fault of the towboat captain to the point that they immediately proposed a 12 month suspension?

The simple answer was that the shaken captain repeatedly apologized for his actions. Specifically, immediately following the collision, in an attempt to explain what happened to Coast Guard investigators, he waived his right to be represented by counsel and gave a lengthy and rambling verbal description of what had happened, and interspersed his monologue with several expressions of regret for his role in the collision.

As a result, the Coast Guard investigators interpreted his apologies as an admission of fault, leading to their 12-month suspension proposal.

By the time his license defense attorney was finally contacted, assigned, arrived on the scene and interviewed him, the captain had talked himself and his company into a pretty tight spot.

The Legal Tide Turns

While his verbal statement could not be retracted, he now worked closely with his own maritime attorney to draft a less emotionally-charged CG-2692 Report in which his culpability for the collision was much less pronounced.

Obviously, this Marine Casualty Report (2692) was seen as useful to his employer who now wanted him to provide a deposition to bolster its defense position in the $3,000,000 suit for damages brought by the tanker company.

After receiving a ‘hold harmless and indemnity agreement’ from his company, the captain agreed to be deposed in the civil suit…with his own maritime attorney in attendance.

Having already deposited his license with the Coast Guard following the incident, the towboat captain’s attorney simultaneously contested his proposed 12-month license suspension proposal in Administrative Court.

And, as additional facts leading to the casualty began to emerge and shared responsibility for the collision became more apparent, his MOPS-assigned attorney and the Coast Guard began to discuss a much less severe sanction against his license in the form of a Settlement Agreement and Entry of Consent Order.

In that agreement, the 12-month license suspension was taken off the table and replaced with a one-month outright suspension followed by a 6-month suspension remitted on a 12-month probationary period.

In addition, it was agreed that the captain complete a Navigational RuIes refresher course during the 1-month period of suspension and send evidence of successful completion to the USCG’s Investigating Officer.

Exercise Your Right To Counsel

In hindsight, the reduced penalty, or even something less severe, might have been the original proposed Coast Guard sanction had the towboat’s captain not attempted to provide a “voluntary statement” to investigators before contacting and conferring with defense counsel to which he was fully entitled to because of his license defense insurance policy.

It cannot be overemphasized how important it is for inland river sector mariners to understand that statements which may appear to be innocent and straightforward to them can be interpreted completely differently by investigators leading to career-threatening consequences.

While this particular case ended with a relatively good outcome, the over $20,000 in defense costs incurred would have made it a very hollow victory for the hard-working professional mariner had he not had the forethought to protect himself and his career with a license insurance policy which fully paid all the legal costs to defend his license.

MOPS is the longtime leader in marine license insurance because it provides unrivaled protection against a full range of potentially professional and financial risks, including: