## Facts

- The tanker M/V Tamano grounded in Casco Bay, Maine, discharging roughly 100,000 gallons of Bunker C oil into coastal waters.
- Multiple class actions were consolidated, including claims by commercial fishermen, commercial clam diggers, and certain beach-area businesses dependent on tourism.
- Plaintiffs asserted theories including negligence, unseaworthiness, trespass, and nuisance, and also invoked federal water-pollution statutes.
- Defendants moved to dismiss (Rule 12(b)(6)) claims seeking recovery for economic loss where plaintiffs alleged no physical injury to property or a proprietary interest in the affected waters or marine life.
- The parties agreed the spill constituted a maritime tort within admiralty jurisdiction.

## Issues

1. Whether commercial fishermen and clam diggers without proprietary interests in the affected public waters or marine life may recover economic losses caused by pollution that interferes with their fishing and digging activities.
2. Whether tourist-dependent businesses may recover lost profits from reduced visitation when their own property was not physically damaged by the spill.
3. How the public-nuisance “special injury” requirement applies to different categories of plaintiffs seeking purely economic damages.

## Decision

- The court denied dismissal of the commercial fishermen’s and clam diggers’ claims for economic loss.
- The court granted dismissal of claims by tourist-dependent businesses to the extent they alleged only lost revenues without physical injury to their own property.
- The court allowed claims to proceed for any business owners who alleged physical contamination or damage to their shore property.

## Legal Principles

- Interference with public rights in navigable waters is analyzed under public-nuisance doctrine when plaintiffs lack proprietary interests in the waters or marine life.
- A private plaintiff suing for public nuisance must plead “special injury,” meaning harm different in kind, not merely degree, from that suffered by the general public.
- Commercial fishermen and clam diggers may satisfy the special-injury requirement by alleging particularized pecuniary loss tied to professional dependence on the continued availability of the affected public resource.
- Economic losses that are remote, community-wide, or derivative (such as reduced tourist traffic affecting local businesses) generally do not constitute special injury absent physical damage to the plaintiff’s own property.
- Physical injury to a plaintiff’s proprietary interest supports recovery under ordinary tort principles even when the underlying event also affects public rights.

## Conclusion

The court drew a line between resource-dependent professionals and more remote commercial interests: commercial fishermen and clam diggers adequately alleged special injury from a public nuisance and could pursue economic-loss damages, while tourist-based businesses without property damage alleged only derivative community harm and could not.


Burgess v. M/V Tamano, 370 F. Supp. 247 (D. Me. 1973)