Gloucester Daily Times
Friday, February 13, 1987
By Bill Kirk
Who does lawyer Joe Orlando represent?
“He represents everyone in town,” said the brother of a local fisherman about Orlando, or Orlando & Associates, 1 Western Ave.
So it was bound to happen that Orlando’s clients and the people his clients are suing would get a little mixed up now and then. Orlando represents a fishing boat owner in a lawsuit against his own boat, the Our Lady of the Sea, a 90-foot stern dragger.
In another lawsuit, Orlando is representing a former crewman of the Our Lady of the Sea in a suit against the same fishing boat.
In the first lawsuit, Orlando represents John P. Borges, one of three owners of the Our Lady of the Sea, who was injured when a block fell on his head last October, requiring 32 stitches. The suit charges that the vessel’s corporation was negligent to maintaining the vessel he is suing for $550,000.
In the second suit, Orlando represents Arthur Tucker, a 62-year-old Magnolia man injured Feb. 28, 1984. Tucker said he slipped while working on the vessel, spilled boiling water on himself and suffered second-and third-degree burns.
The suit charges that the vessel’s corporation was negligent in maintaining the vessel. Tucker of 2 Ocean View Ave. is suing for $275,000. The vessel, a 90-foot, steel-hulled stern dragger, is owned by three people – Borges, 1 Jacques Lane, Antonio Pata, 42 Millett St. and John Pata, 16 Oak St.
“He represents everyone in town,” said John M. Borges, the brother of boat owner John P. Borges.
Orlando said, “I fight fishing vessel owners in cases brought by crewmen, and then when the fishing vessel owner gets hurt, he comes to me for a lawsuit.
“I have to ask, ‘What is going on here?'” Orlando said recently while sitting in his office overlooking Harbor Cove and part of Gloucester’s fishing fleet. The enemies in all of this, he said, are the insurance companies.
Orlando said the problem is that insurance companies are not requiring safety measures on the boats they insure. He added that insurance companies are charging high premiums to make up for bad investments made over the past decade.
Insurance company executives, meanwhile, say the problem is attorneys who are bringing expensive, and often frivolous, personal injury suits and forcing up the cost of insurance.
Orlando first began representing Tucker after the Magnolia man decided to sue for burns he received while employed as cook on the boat. Tucker said he was carrying a pot of boiling water used to cook potatoes for home fries when he slipped, spilling the boiling water on his left side. The water caused second- and third-degree burns, he said.
Third-degree burns are the worst types of burns, causing skin to peel. Second-degree burns are less serious, causing blisters, and first-degree burns cause the skin to turn red.
Tucker said that although he had put strips of non-skid material on the floor around the sink, there was nothing to keep him from slipping where he was carrying the water. He said that after the accident, he did not ask the boat’s captain to bring the vessel back to port, so the boat continued fishing for another couple of days.
“Being a tough guy, I didn’t want to spoil the trip,” Tucker said. “One of the crew kept treating it for me, but I should have gone in.”
When he did get back to port, he said he was treated for his burns at the Cape Ann Medical Center by Dr. Neil Mann.
“He (Dr.Mann) said I should have come in,” Tucker said, “It got all infected by the time I got in.”
He said he has scars that will be with him the rest of his life.
“I am Always going to have the scars,” he said. “it’s around my belt and huts when I work and in the summer when it’s hot. I will always have them.”
Tucker had been fishing on the boat a little over a year. He said, when the accident occurred. The boat’s corporation paid for his medical expenses, as required by law. Tucker said he was off work for a month.
One reason he decided to bring the suit last year is that “afterwards, they just fired me,” he said. “It kind of hurt my feelings. There was no reason to fire me. I did my job. They said they just didn’t want me anymore.”
Tucker said last week that he was surprised at the amount of money being asked in the lawsuit. In original discussions with Orlando, he said, “no figures were involved.
It’s just a penny-ante thing. I didn’t know anything about that (the$275,000). “All I know is I’ve got scars, and I want some compensation for that,” he said.
He is now working on the Cynthia & Michael, a 72-foot, Gloucester stern dragger.
Orlando said that when he first took the Tucker case, he started negotiating with Irving Smith an insurance adjuster in Seattle, Wash. Insurance adjusters represent insurance companies in cases like this one.
According to Orlando, the insurance company has so far refused to compensate Tucker for the injuries he received, Orlando said. But Smith said yesterday that he knew nothing about the Tucker case and had not negotiated with Orlando about it.
Although the suit was filed Jan. 26 before a three-year statute of limitations ran out, Orlando said, negotiations would continue with the insurance company for a settlement. Smith, reached at his home in Seattle Thursday, said he never spoke to Orlando and the Tucker case.
John M. Borges, the brother of the owner of the Our Lady of the Sea, who is familiar with both cases and who knows Tucker, was told by Orlando not to comment on either case.
John P. Borges could not be reached for comment.
John P. Borges has been unable to return to work since he was injured in October, his brother said. A new captain has been hired and the boat is continuing to fish.
The attorney for the Our Lady of the Sea Corp. John M. She, refused to comment on either case.
A staff Attorney for the Board of Bar Overseers, the state agency empowered by the state to evaluate the ethical conduct of attorneys, said it was not unethical for an attorney to represent two opposing people in separate lawsuits.
In this case, he said, “A corporation is an entity, just like another person. I don’t think we could call it a conflict of interest.”
