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Pirates of the courtroom

By Mark Obbie

One of my favorite, most memorable assignments as a young newspaper reporter was to cover treasure hunter Mel Fisher's discovery in 1985 of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, still considered one of the great shipwreck finds. True to my nerdy law-reporter roots, I spent part of my time in Key West tracing Fisher's legal history, a tortuous string of battles between academic and profit-minded marine archaeologists (I spent another part of the week partying with Fisher's newly rich divers, but that's another story for another blog). So I had above-average interest in John Colapinto's feature, "Secrets of the Deep," in the April 7 New Yorker (abstract only). The experienced magazine writer focused on a latter-day treasure-hunting controversy, involving Odyssey Marine Exploration, and its litigious history over rights to shipwrecks that Spain has challenged; SEC charges of stock manipulation; and other legal-tinged tales of lost treasure. As a narrative and a story based on personality and business, Colapinto's piece doesn't disappoint. But as legal reporting, it falls short. Long as it is, it could have used a couple more pages to explain what exactly the current fights are about, and the factual and legal arguments they turn on.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).