The U.S. General Accounting Office has found the Coast Guard's administrative law judge system to be a valid court operation that affords justice to mariners brought to trial.

The report serves to polish the image of a civil law trial system that was tarnished in 2007 by a report in the Baltimore Sun and hearings before a U.S. House subcommittee.

The newspaper reported that mariners stood little chance of winning cases brought by the Coast Guard into its administrative law system.

But the GAO study did not consider the standard of justice achieved in the system when it takes up cases brought against fishermen and industry merchants by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which contracts to have its charges tried in the Coast Guard courts.

Nor does it consider allegations of improper influence by the chief justice on a trial judge who has been assigned to hear the case against the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.

But Todd Zisner, the Inspector General in the Department of Commerce which includes NOAA, last week announced he is organizing an investigation of the way in which NOAA, using the Coast Guard and Massachusetts Environmental Police as its police force, enforces the Byzantine fishing regulatory law system off state shores.

Zisner was acceding to a request by Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, who was asked to seek the probe by members of Massachusetts' congressional delegation and the state legislative leadership who said there was reason to believe NOAA is motivated at times by "vindictive" and "retaliatory" attitudes.

These explosive allegations clearly but implicitly refer to the instigation in February of a second major case — a 59-count notice of violation and assessment (NOVA) — against the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction for brokering thousands of pounds of illegally landed fish in 2004 to 2006.

The notice proposed to close the auction, the No. 1 platform for sales of fish caught in the Gulf of Maine, for 120 days and fine the business more then $300,000.

The auction in 2006 won a rare and near complete victory in a trial held in the Coast Guard administrative law system, and the legislators and U.S. senators and congressmen saw "get back" in the intensity of the investigation to make a case against the auction that would stick.

Many fishermen told the Times they were induced to "rat out" the auction with offers of reduced or dropped charges against them for bringing illegal fish to the auction.

NOAA appealed the verdict, which in the system, gave the secretary of Commerce the authority to set a penalty as the appellate authority.

In the name of the secretary, then acting NOAA administrator Conrad Lautenbacher overruled Judge Peter Fitzpatrick, who had cleared the auction in the first case, and ordered another administrative judge to determine the penalty for keeping false records.

Administrative Judge Michael Devine drastically reduced the penalty proposed by NOAA chief litigator Charles Juliand.

Instead of a 90-day closing, Devine imposed 20 days to be served at the auction's discretion, and he cut the proposed $120,000 fine to $20,000. In doing so, he said the penalties proposed by Juliand "were contrary to the interest of justice."

Both the trial judge in the first case, the now retired Fitzpatrick, and the judge assigned to hear the new case against the auction, Walter J, Brudzinski, play pivotal roles in the ongoing investigations of the Coast Guard administrative law system.

At a congressional hearing in 2007 spurred by the Baltimore Sun article, Fitzpatrick debunked claims by a retired judge and colleague, Jeffie Massie, that the system was corrupted by the willingness of at least one judge, Brudzinski, to allow the chief justice, Joseph Ingolia, to influence the outcome of cases.

The GAO, the auditing arm of Congress, was assigned the study in the immediate aftermath of the Sun report, did the research in May and June, and published its final report last Friday.

Working with the structure of the system and the regulations that defined its approach, the GAO explicitly avoided investigating the explosive allegations of a manipulative chief justice, Ingolia, and a willingly manipulable trial judge, Brudzinski.

A spokesman for the Coast Guard administrative law system told the Times that Brudzinski was chosen by lot to hear the auction's defense against the 59-count allegation, which results from an investigation that began in the aftermath of the court verdict for the auction and against NOAA in 2006.

The announcement of the assignment was by Ingolia, however.

The GAO deferred that part of the probe to the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that took in the Coast Guard and gave it a primary military mission for the first time in modern times.

Homeland Security's Inspector General "is still in the middle of (its investigation), according to Stephen Caldwell, director of homeland security and justice issues for the GAO.

On the independent blog, Coast Guard News, Rear Adm. Charles D. Michel, director of governmental and public affairs, expressed satisfaction at GAO study's findings. He also expressed confidence in the eventual exoneration of the service as a result of the still incomplete probe of the claims of improper influence from chief judge to trial judge made by Massie under oath and in written testimony.

"The Coast Guard's administrative law judge program contains elements designed to foster the decisional independence of its judges," the GAO report concluded. Regulations and procedures followed "are designed to ensure that the judges are not subject to undue influence from Coast Guard officials."

In a development that could influence the scope of the impending Department of Commerce Inspector General's investigation into the prosecutorial behavior of NOAA investigators and litigators, a delegation of eight legislators from North Carolina, including the president pro tem of its General Assembly, has written to the state's congressional delegation.

Following the pattern established in Massachusetts, the North Carolina lawmakers asked their colleagues in Congress to investigate law enforcement practices against North Carolina fishermen.

The Inspector General's probe is in the stage of developing its scope, with conflicting requests.

Lubchenco has asked that the scope be national, but the Massachusetts congressional letter proposed a more intense and narrow investigation.

Richard Gaines may be contacted at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.