We do maritime work and we represented the owners and the underwriters of the Costco Busan, which was not a Costco ship at the time. In San Francisco you have to have a pilot. You have to pay that pilot and he’s responsible for bringing the ship from the dock, out through under the two bridges, and out into open water. And you can’t do it yourself so no ship’s captain who’s coming in or out of there has ever been able to take his own boat in or out and therefore has no experience doing it.

Well this pilot took this boat away from the dock in fog that was apparently as bad as anybody ever seen in San Francisco and did some things which demonstrated what some had said was situational lack of a situational awareness and turned the boat and hit one of the stanchions on the Oakland Bay Bridge. I think it’s my understanding and I’m not sure of this but nobody has ever done that in 88 years.

And someone who was monitoring the communications on that morning said what are your intentions? And didn’t get a satisfactory answer and they went off the phone and said, off the radio and said I bet he hits the bridge. And you know, a minute and 21 seconds later he did.

So that caused some damage to the environment, was obviously, very high visibility case involving the senators and Nancy Pelosi was involved and rightly so, wanting to make certain that everybody who was harmed by that was reasonably reimbursed. The pilot subsequently went to federal prison for his involvement in this and there was significant evidence about significant use of prescription drugs, which many felt affected his judgement and his abilities for which the underwriters and the ship owner were responsible.