Clausen Oysters Verdict Upheld on Appeal -- Award of $1.4+ Million, Plus Attoneys' Fees, in NEW CARISSA Oil Spill Litigation Will Stand, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP Announced.Business Editors/Legal Writers SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 12, 2003 In an opinion issued today by Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain of the United States Court of Appeals The United States courts of appeals (or circuit courts) are the intermediate appellate courts of the United States federal court system. A court of appeals decides appeals from the district courts within its federal judicial circuit, and in some instances from other for the Ninth Circuit, the court held admissible Clausen Oysters' scientist's opinion that the cause of death of approximately 3.5 million oysters in Coos Bay, Oregon Coos Bay is a city located in Coos County, Oregon, United States. As of the 2000 census, Coos Bay had a total population of 15,374. The 2006 estimate is 16,005 residents.[1] , was due to toxic contact from oil in the water that caused lesions on the oysters' gill membranes, leading to death by bacterial infection. The opinion was held admissible as proper expert opinion under the Federal Rules of Evidence The Federal Rules of Evidence generally govern civil and criminal proceedings in the courts of the United States and proceedings before U.S. Bankruptcy judges and U.S. magistrates, to the extent and with the exceptions stated in the rules. Promulgated by the U.S. . Clausen Oysters was represented by Davis Wright Tremaine  This article or section is written like an .Please help [ rewrite this article] from a neutral point of view. Mark blatant advertising for , using . LLP LLP - Lower Layer Protocol . The NEW CARISSA, a cargo vessel owned by Taiheiyo Kaiun Co., Ltd., a Japanese company, and carrying 400,000 gallons of fuel, grounded off Coos Bay in February 1999. In order to prevent an environmental disaster, oil spill responders from Oregon and the Federal government decided to burn the ship and its fuel oil. While the burn was mostly successful, at least 70,000 gallons of oil were released into marine waters and found its way into Coos Bay, the largest oyster-growing region in Oregon. Approximately 3.5 million oysters then died. In June 2001, a federal jury in Eugene, Oregon, awarded Max and Lilli Clausen, d/b/a Clausen Oysters of Coos Bay, Oregon, approximately $1.4 million in damages, plus interest, attorneys' fees, expert fees and costs caused by the oil spill from the NEW CARISSA. The losses resulted from the large numbers of oysters killed by exposure to oil that entered and circulated in Coos Bay on the strong winter tides following the grounding. Damages were awarded under the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and the Oregon Oil Spill Act. "We are very pleased for the Clausens," said Bud Walsh, lead attorney for Clausen Oysters and a partner with the San Francisco law offices of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. "The recovery of the damages from this oil spill has been a long time in coming. We are very pleased that the Ninth Circuit has upheld the jury verdict and the trial judge's rulings." Davis Wright Tremaine LLP is a full-service business and litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. law firm, with national practices in the areas of litigation, business transactions, energy, and more. The firm has more than 400 attorneys in its nine offices located in the Pacific Northwest, Anchorage, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of , Washington D.C., and Shanghai, China. |
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