The Western District of Washington recently issued a pair of summary judgment decisions opening the way for liability in a $14.3 million oil spill clean-up cost recovery action.  The case arose from the 2021 grounding of the American Challenger, a 90-foot decommissioned fishing vessel, near Bodega Bay, in Marin County, California. The vessel was being towed from Puget Sound, Washington, to a scrapyard in Mexico when the towing vessel fouled its propeller and lost propulsion. The towline broke, and the American Challenger drifted aground on rocky shoreline. The subsequent oil spill response recovered somewhere between 400 and 760 gallons of contaminated water, 50 gallons of hydraulic fluid, and 14 cubic yards of oiled debris.  The federal government brought an OPA 90 cost recovery action against the corporate owner and its individual owner as well as the estate of the now-deceased tug captain.

The first summary judgment decision addressed whether the tug captain was the “operator” of the former fishing vessel under tow.  Relying heavily on CERCLA authorities the Court applied a very broad construction and held the tug captain was the “operator” of the former fishing vessel as one “who directs or controls the movement of a vessel.”   Equally noteworthy, the Court rejected the contention that a party who was not an “operator” for purposes of the Certificate of Financial Responsibility requirement would likewise not be an operator for liability purposes in a cost recovery action.

In the second decision, the court granted a summary judgment motion brought by the United States imposing strict liability for the spill on the tug captain’s estate.