Maine Lobster Industry Can Sue Seafood Watchdog for Defamation, Judge Rules

Maine’s lobster industry can proceed with a defamation lawsuit that it brought against a seafood watchdog group, which had placed a do-not-buy designation on the crustaceans because of the dangers it said that the industry’s fishing nets posed to an endangered whale species.

A federal judge last month denied a motion to have the case dismissed, drawing an appeal on Thursday from the group Seafood Watch, a nonprofit run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium that publishes seafood sustainability ratings.

It has been nearly two years since the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and several other plaintiffs sued the nonprofit after it downgraded the sustainability rating for American lobsters caught off Maine from yellow to red in 2022. The nonprofit advised consumers to avoid those lobsters, saying that endangered North Atlantic right whales were at significant risk of becoming entangled in fishing gear.

The fishermen blamed Seafood Watch in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Maine, for damaging the reputation of the billion-dollar industry and prompting some of their customers to cancel contracts.

“Reputation and goodwill cannot be adequately replaced through awarding damages and this injury lingers as long as the ‘red listing’ does,” Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. wrote in the 137-page order denying the motion to dismiss the case.

The fishermen applauded the judge’s ruling in a statement, having argued in the lawsuit that the average price per pound of lobster dropped by 40 percent after Seafood Watch changed its sustainability rating.