SAN DIEGO : $2.66-Million Award in Fallen Tuna Case

A fisherman who was injured when a large tuna fell on him as a catch was being hoisted on a boat was awarded $2.66 million Friday by a San Diego Superior Court jury, which found that his employer’s negligence caused the accident.

Tradition Mariner Inc. of San Diego was ordered to pay the judgment to Julio Simoes, 32, in what attorneys called the “fish fall accident.”

The 60- to 80-pound tuna fell from a purse seine net that had been used to capture a school of tuna near Samoa in the Western Pacific. As fisherman used a giant hydraulic winch on the boat to haul the load on-board, a tuna that was caught in the net fell to the deck, striking Simoes on the shoulder.

Attorney John A. Marin, who argued the case to the jury alongside his son John T. Marin, said the bulk of the jury award was to compensate his client for lost wages. Just before the December, 1990, accident, Simoes had passed a Coast Guard test that would have allowed him to work as a ship master and double his annual $40,000 salary, Marin said.

Simoes, a native of Portugal who now lives in San Diego, underwent back surgery 10 months after the accident. He has recovered almost completely, but doctors have prohibited him from returning to the sea.