Page 21: of Marine News Magazine (October 2020)

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Inland Waterways

By Randy O’Neill immediately assigned a local maritime attorney who assist- prudent, yet painful, decision was to accept the suspension ed him in the completion and submission of the Marine with probation offer.

Casualty Report (2692) and subsequently accompanied Because he had opted for income protection when pur- the river pilot to his in-person Coast Guard interview. chasing his license insurance policy, the pilot received his

The meeting was brief. The pilot was charged with insured wages for the duration of his suspension, but no negligence for both failing to check and verifying the amount of money could compensate the hit to his profes- height/draft of the barge’s spuds, and failing to request sional reputation caused by two egregious lapses in judge- the operator to raise the bridge to facilitate safe passage. ment: not verifying the spud’s height and/or not request-

He was offered a settlement agreement of an outright ing the bridge to be raised.

three-month license suspension with an additional nine- Because this column opened with an upbeat quote from month probationary period following the completion of Mark Twain, it’s only ? tting that we end it by going back his ‘beach’ time. a few millennia to ancient Greece and the sobering, yet

After debating the merits of contesting the terms of cautionary, words of the tragedian Sophocles who wrote, the settlement offer, both he and his attorney agreed that, “Men of ill judgement oft ignore the good that lies within given the absence of mitigating circumstances, the most their hands, till they have lost it.” © Lisa L. Bell / Adobe Stock 21 www.marinelink.com MN