Maximum 10 months jail for Cosco Busan pilot in Bay Area spill

US District Judge Susan Illston sentenced Capt John Cota, the pilot aboard the 5,555-TEU Cosco Busan for hitting the Bay Bridge in the San Francisco fog November 7, 2007, a maximum 10 months in jail, making him the first ship's pilot in America to be imprisoned for an accident.

Cota accepted responsibility in March to misdemeanour charges of polluting waters and killing 2,400 birds after the spill of 53,000 gallons of fuel that spread over 26 miles resulting in an estimated US$70 million clean up bill.

Judge Illston said Costa's carelessness was exactly what Congress intended to punish when it toughened maritime laws after the Alaskan Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Costa is to report to prison on September 18.

She exceeded prosecution's demand for a two-month sentence and a US$30,000 fine, noting that Cota, along with the ship's owner and operator, are still defendants in multimillion-dollar lawsuits from the accident which resulted in an oil spill.

Cota's lawyer, Jeffrey Bornstein, said Cota accepted responsibility for the accident, but that many others were also to blame, reported Newark's Journal of Commerce.

Said Judge Illston: "This was a tragedy with a lot of authors, but Capt Cota was right in the middle."

The ship's operating company, Fleet Management Ltd, goes on trial in September on the same misdemeanour charges as well as criminal charges of fabricating documents to derail a federal investigators.

(Source: www.schednet.com)