A federal appeals court on Oct. 9 ordered the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit that Maine lobster businesses and two fishermen's associations filed against the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation over its Seafood Watch program's "red" rating of American lobster. The First Circuit held that the aquarium's advice to avoid the lobster, which it tied to risks to the endangered North Atlantic right whale, was aimed at the whole fishery and did not single out the plaintiffs, so Maine law does not let them sue over it.
Under what courts call the group-defamation rule, a damaging statement about a large group cannot support a lawsuit by one member unless the statement or its context points to that member in particular. "The fact that a statement may apply to every member of a large group is not enough to trigger the particular-reference exception," U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman wrote for the three-judge panel. The court noted that the Maine lobster industry employs more than 5,600 lobstermen.
Seafood Watch gave Maine lobster a yellow rating in 2014. In September 2022 it downgraded American lobster to red and published a 73-page report recommending that consumers avoid American lobster caught by trap from the Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine stocks, citing the right whale and what it called insufficient measures to reduce the risks. The report did not name any of the plaintiffs, according to the opinion.
Bean Maine Lobster Inc., the Maine Lobstermen's Association, the Maine Coast Fishermen's Association, Maine Lobster and Processing LLC and Bug Catcher Inc. sued in U.S. District Court in Maine in March 2023. U.S. District Judge John A. Woodcock Jr. refused to dismiss the case in February 2025, finding that the rating applied equally to every member of the industry. The appeals court agreed to hear the aquarium's appeal before trial.
The panel accepted, as it must at this early stage, that the rating caused the plaintiffs substantial economic harm, including an estimate by Bug Catcher's owner that he lost about 20% of his business. It also noted that one major customer of Maine Lobster and Processing cited the red rating when it stopped buying Gulf of Maine lobster. Neither fact showed that the statements were about the plaintiffs specifically, the court said.
Because the group-defamation rule decided the case, the court did not reach the aquarium's other arguments, including that its statements were scientific opinion rather than statements of fact. It sent the case back to Woodcock with instructions to dismiss the complaint.