Kristen Grieco
The Gloucester Daily Times
Published: February 05, 2008 12:49 am
The lengthy legal process that marina owners are required to go through when they want to dispose of an abandoned vessel in their yard is about to get shorter, easier and cheaper.
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State Rep. Anthony Verga, D-Gloucester, at Brown's Yacht Yard yesterday, pushed legislation which will become law that would aid yacht yards when boats are abandoned. Deborah Hammond/Staff Photo
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A bill sponsored by state Rep. Anthony Verga, D-Gloucester, would make it much easier for marina owners to get rid of abandoned boats, a process now mired in paperwork and legal fees.
Abandonment, which marina owners say typically happens when the bill for storage and repair adds up to more than the boat's worth, can cost a marina thousands in disposal and legal fees, not to mention the money lost by having a derelict craft taking up space that a paying customer could use.
But no matter how much of a nuisance an abandoned boat is, a marina operator is bound by law not to touch it until they've gone through a lengthy legal process, Verga said.
"Several marina operators are pushing for this (bill) and they all face the same problem of spaces being taken," Verga said. "It handicaps their business."
Marina owners say that dealing with an abandoned boat under current law is tedious, time-consuming and expensive. Once a marina decides a boat has been abandoned, it needs to acquire the vessel's title to sell or destroy it. That requires the marina to hire a lawyer and file a petition in Superior Court.
Marinas typically need to purge boats every two or three years, as the number of abandoned vessels pile up and take up larger amounts of space.
Jamy Buchanan Madeja, legal counsel for the Massachusetts Marine Trades Association, a statewide body that represents marine trades businesses, said that the process of taking ownership of an abandoned boat can be plagued with court delays.
"You're just in Superior Court, which is vastly overworked with other matters," Madeja said. "It takes years. They keep postponing, you're paying a lawyer the whole time. It's all about paperwork. It's never about the owner of a vessel who has an objection."
David Smith, a local maritime lawyer who handles abandoned vessel lawsuits, said that the process under current law can actually be streamlined and done in as little as four months. The filing fee for a lawsuit is about $300 per boat, he said.
Russ Vickers, owner of Hawthorne Cove Marina in Salem, estimated that disposing of a 30-foot boat costs between $1,500 and $2,000, and legal fees to gain ownership are about the same. And while the process goes through the courts (which, in an extreme case, once took Vickers five years), the marina is losing rent on the space - between $240 and $300 per month for a 30-foot boat.
"The thing is that 50 years ago, maybe lots of boatyards had extra space where they could tuck a boat," said Peter Bent, owner of Brown's Yacht Yard in Gloucester. "In today's world with real estate and taxes, every square inch of land is valuable and that boat's taking up valuable land. We turn people away for boat storage."
According to Smith, the new law will return the process to what it was three or four years ago. Then, a marina owner could simply adhere to a public notification and auctioning process. But then, Smith said, the Environmental Police adopted a new policy that forced marina owners to file lawsuits against the owners of abandoned boats instead.
Under the proposed bill, marina owners could gain the title of an abandoned boat without hiring a lawyer. They would need to go through a public notification process, including contacting the owner of the vessel by certified mail, advertising in a local newspaper and going through a waiting period.
If the owner came forward and a dispute ensued, the parties could go to district court or superior court. District court typically has shorter waiting periods and, therefore, tends to cost less than going through superior court.
Smith said the new law will not be a boon for marina owners. While some boats have value beyond the repair and storage bill, any extra money made from a vessel's sale is held indefinitely for the owner. Under the new law, that money will go into a state fund that later could be allocated for different uses on state waterways.
Madeja said the state is not promising any money; the law would only establish the fund and if money was raised through abandoned vessel auctions, it would be deposited.
The law would also apply to city-owned property on which boats were abandoned, though Gloucester Harbormaster Jim Caulkett said that city bylaws allow it to remove vessels with relative ease and without a court process. Still, he said, after removing upward of 30 derelict boats over the past nine years, he's happy to see a bill addressing the issue.
Because of the nuisance and cost that an abandoned vessel can cause, some marina owners have developed a policy of turning away boats that are in bad shape.
"The good news is that if you've been in business for 35 years, you can try to avoid taking the type of boat that's going to cause a problem," Bent said.
Vickers said he became sensitized to being more discriminating about which boats he took early on, after he readily accepted boats for storage that he "probably shouldn't have."
"I'm much more careful about who we take in for storage now based on the age and condition of the boat," Vickers said.
Not all marinas have the luxury of turning customers away, however.
"Those are the lucky ones," said Madeja. "There are many marinas throughout the state, including city marinas, that can't be so precise."
Verga was unable to give a timetable for the House of Representatives to vote on the bill. It is being reviewed by the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.
