Ruminations in Korea

The healing process continues. I’m off of crutches and using a cane. My thigh bone is very nearly completely healed. Now I am working on rebuilding the muscles in my right leg. Due to four months of not using any muscles, my right leg is mush. But the muscle is coming back fairly quickly. At my last visit, the doctor hinted that I might be able to get rid of the cane after about two weeks.

Now that the the major physical worries are over, I have some time to reflect a bit on the injuries.

After I slammed into the concrete pole on 23 September 2006 and rolled along the ground for a bit, my right thigh bone looked like this:

The fact that my femur broke into four large pieces and several smaller chunks most likely saved me from a compound fracture with bones jamming through my skin, major soft tissue damage, and blood pouring everywhere.

Surgery several hours after the accident fixed the break. The doctors but in a titanium plate and 11 screws. Apparently a drill bit broke off during the surgery, which I didn’t know about until months later. The post surgery leg looked like this on 23 September 2006 (the staples running up the side of my leg are visible):

I was discharged from the hospital five weeks later. Seven days after being released from the hospital, I went for x-rays and a check up on 4 November 2006. I took the x-rays, but the doctor was not available on that day to review the x-rays. What no one knew was that the titanium plate in my leg had cracked:

Note the few stray bone fragments. They are buried deep in my muscle tissue and will remain there forever.

The next morning, 5 November 2006, I woke up, and when I moved my right leg, my thigh bowed up like an upside down “U”. I didn’t know why it did that. It didn’t hurt, so I rationalized that it was something do to with the muscle.

The next morning, 6 November 2006, my leg was not any better. I went to the hospital to find out what was wrong. The doctor looked at X-ray taken two days earlier and exclaimed “Oh shit!” He told me the plate had broken and that my bone had re-broken. He immediately re-admitted me to the hospital and sent me down for more x-rays. My leg looked like this:

From another angle:

Well…that explained why my thigh was shaped like an upside down “U” when I moved it.

I underwent my second surgery to remove the broken plate, saw about 1cm off my thigh bone to make the ends flat, screw on a new, lager, wider, thicker plate, and to graft some bone from my thigh onto my leg. After surgery on 7 November 2006, the new plate looks like this (The broken drill bit can be seen in this picture):

As part of my work, I deal with a lot of maritime law cases such as ship accidents, cargo damage, etc. Give the quirky nature of maritime laws, jurisdictional issues, and the lengthy history of commercial shipping, maritime law has become a rather highly specialized field of law. It can be quite interesting work when untangling legal knots to figure out who to sue, where to sue them, what country’s law should apply, etc., particularly when you have common scenarios such as a Vietnamese-flagged ship owned by a Russian company crewed with an Indonesian crew colliding on the open seas with a Panamanian-flagged vessel owned by a paper company set up by German owners and crewed with a South Korean crew while the vessel is carrying cargo owned by Americans, Saudi Arabians, Malaysians, Japanese, Mexican, French, and Italian owners that is insured by English, Swiss, and Norwegian insurance companies.

Add to those problems, of responsiblility for clean up of oil spills, damage and clean up of shore lines and shore-based business, and it can become even more complicated. To top it off, you can always throw a bit of theft by scavengers in for good measure.

On 18 January 2007, severe weather hit the UK and the crew of the “MSC Napoli” abandoned ship. The vessel was intentionally run aground, apparently as a protective measure to minimize damage. The vessel partially rolled to one side and has lost approximatly 200 containers overboard. Some of these containers full of people’s property have washed up on shore. Although the property still belongs to the owners of the cargo, people along the shore seem to be carting them off… essentially stealing them. This is where laws become even more entertaining. While it is not necessarily illegal to take the items home, it may be (usually is) illegal to keep them.

As the following article from the BBC shows, it can be a headache for insurers, a nightmare for property owners, and a potential windfall for theives…er… scavengers…er…beach combers. This is just part of what I deal with on a regular basis:

Beach-combers have been told to stay away, but scavengers are out on Branscombe beach in Devon, where booty is washing up from the stranded ship MSC Napoli. So can they keep what they find?

Brand new BMW motorbikes have been wheeled out of the shingle by keen treasure-hunters. Wine casks, perfume and car parts littering the shore have been rolled clear or tucked under the arm.

People are picking through the contents of spilt containers from the cargo ship MSC Napoli beached off the Devon coast and at night, the area is lit by flickering torches as they scour the area for goodies.

Warnings that chemicals such as battery acid, pesticide and oily liquids have also washed up, are proving little deterrent against the lure of “free stuff” littering the beach. But can people keep it?

So far, police have not closed off the beach to stop them coming.

And there is, says Stephen Askins, a partner with maritime lawyers Ince and Co, a right to salve property. Someone could argue they are recovering goods from the beach to protect them, as they would be in a poorer state come four or five tides’ time.

But, before they clear the car boot and head to the coast, they should be aware of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995. It states clearly that if they try to conceal or keep the booty they are breaking the law.

If they ignore the advice to leave it alone and report it to the coastguard, they must fill in relevant paperwork. But that still doesn’t allow them to keep it.

The goods still belong to their owners, whether they are stuck in containers on the stricken vessel, or washed up on the shore. Contractors have already been brought in to clean up the beach and return anything to its rightful home.

But when Joe Public decides to “help”, as seems to be the case all over Branscombe beach, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s Receiver of Wrecks steps in.

The job title goes back to the previous 1854 Merchant Shipping Act, which also set out rules on picking up flotsam and jetsam.

Salvage, and indeed deliberate wrecking of ships, around our island nation has a long history. The principles governing ownership and recovery go back at least to the 1300s says Alison Kentuck, the MCA’s deputy receiver.

If people take the cargo, they fill in a “report of wreck and salvage” form, with their contact details, what they found, where and when. “It’s available from pretty much anybody in uniform down on the beach”, she says.

Her role is then to reunite owner and property. A reward to the finder could be offered, depending on the value of the goods, the condition they are in after rescue, and the effort involved in recovering them from the beach. Wheeling something home, she stresses, is “not classed as a huge amount of effort”.

Hiding the goods and not giving them back is a criminal offence, with a possible fine of up to ?2,500 per offence.

Plus, the hot-fingered beach-comber, would waive their right to a salvage award, and have to pay the owner twice the good’s value: “In the case of a BMW motorbike, it could be quite expensive”.

As for paddling out to see what the remaining 2,000 containers may hold, it is of course highly dangerous. And, would-be pirates note, there are official salvors charged with recovering the cargo stuck at sea, and the damaged ship itself.

It is an honor to be selected by Fox Creek Leather as their January Featured Rider. Poke around my site for a while and see if there is anything of interest. There’s a lot of biker stuff (you can read all about my recent accident), some blues, some socio-political commentary, and some general observations about living in Korea. If you see something you like, come back for more.

Many people have emailed, telephoned, etc. asking about the condition of my motorcycle. I usually reply that the situation is critical.It is a little difficult to explain the extent of the damage. I didn’t quite understand it until I saw it myself. I had asked my friend who is repairing it how long it would take. He said it would take about two months to fix. When I asked why it took so long, he said it would take about one month to get all of the parts together (many have to be ordered from the US) and about one month to do the actual repair work.

I asked why it was going to take a month to do the repair work. My friend sighed on the other end of the telephone and said something to the effect of, “think of it this way….I am not repairing your old bike. I am basically building you a new bike.”

My reply was, “what do you mean building me a new bike.” He paused for a moment and said, “basically you’ve got a rear fender, a seat, a frame, and an engine…well, most of an engine anyway. Everything else is getting replaced.”

I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what he was saying. Eventually, he visited me in the hospital with about 200 pictures of the damage to various parts of the bike. The list of parts to be replaced is two pages long.

I picked out a few pictures that are fairly representative of the damages.

One of the first things to hit the concrete pole was my gas tank.

As the bike flipped over and sent me flying, the bike landed on the other side of the gas tank and tumbled up the road.

Unfortunately, before I went off the bike, the concrete pole basically sheared off the right side of my bike, crushing my leg in the process. This next picture is the right foot peg and one of the exhaust pipes coming from the engine. The pipes are pancaked flat and the foot peg is bent upwards. My foot was on that peg when I hit the pole. There was literally no space between the side of my bike at the pole. My thigh was smashed into that “no space.”

Here is a picture of the right side of my bike before the accident:

Here is a picture of what the right side of my bike looks like now. However, this is not a very accurate representation of the damage, because the front end is still on the bike. Everything in front of the gas tank will be replaced….everything…forks, fender, handle bars, mirrors, levers, everything.

I am anxiously awaiting the day when she will look like the “before” picture again… except with a few cool modifications.

Court judgments can sometimes be quite humorous and sometimes quite harsh. For some reason, this particular judgment fell into both categories for me.

Quick bit of information for the uninitiated: A “letter of credit” is a specialized document that is essentially a guarantee by a bank to immediately pay a certain amount of money to a beneficiary when the beneficiary presents the bank with certain specific documents (often within a specified deadline). It is imperative a letter of credit specify the terms upon which it is payable. In other words, for example, Party A and Party B enter into an agreement whereby Party A sells something to Party B. Party B says that he will pay Party A the purchase price as soon as Party A shows proof that the goods have been shipped. Party A insists that Party B’s bank should guarantee the payment. So, Party B’s bank issues a letter of credit requiring the payment of money upon receipt of shipping document. So thebank must pay the purchase price to Party A as soon as Party A gives the bank the documents proving that the goods have been shipped to B.

The bank doesn’t care about any of the details of the agreement between Party A and Party B. The bank’s only concern is whether the proper documents have been submitted. If the proper documents are submitted, the bank must pay under the letter of credt. If the proper documents are not submitted, then the bank can refuse to pay under the letter of credit.

In the case of Transparent Products Corp. v. Paysaver Credit Union, 7U.C.C. Rep. Serv.2d 832 (7th Cir. 1988), the credit union issed a document titled Letter of Credit. The document stated simply, “We hereby establish our letter of credit at the request of [the customer] up to the aggregate amount of $50,000.”

The holder of the letter of credit went to the credit union and tried to receive money under the letter of credit. The credit union refused and said that it had no obligation to give money to the party.

The court sided with the credit union and held that the credit union did not have any obligation to pay anything to the party because the so-called letter or credit did not meet the strict requirements of a letter of credit. The court pointed out that without any explicit indication of when or under what circumstances the amount must be paid the document was not a letter of credit. In the humorous (at least to me) and rather harshly worded judgment, the court held, “calling a pumpkin a ‘letter of credit’ will not make it one,” and this document “engaging to do nothing and mentioning no events is simply a stray piece of paper.”

Thus, one man’s document guaranteeing his receipt of $50,000 is nothing more than “a stray piece of paper.”

A friend of mine sent me the following video of a bluesman named Seasick Steve. It’s good to be humbled by things like this. Although very competant with six strings, in this video, Seasick Steve plays a driving blues piece called “Dog House Boogie” on a beat up old electric guitar with only three strings. He’s more than twices as good as I am with only half the strings.

Here’s a good video of Seasick Steve and the Level Devils doing a blues piece called “Cheap.”

Finally, here is the story behind Seasick Steve’s three-stringed guitar and about 10 minutes of good music recorded in Scotland.

I was released from the hospital on 23 December 2006 with little fanfare. Just a quick goodbye to the nurses on duty and an admonition from the doctor to be very careful and to keep stretching my leg. I went home and promptly fell asleep for 17 hours.

By the time I left the hospital I was able to bend my knee 120 degrees by force and about 110 degrees without force. It was difficult to put much weight on my broken leg. Physically I was very weak.

I quickly learned that it is much easier being in the hospital than it is to be out in the real world. In the hospital, the sofa is one step away from the bed, the TV is on the wall at the end of the bed, the refrigerator is next to the couch, and the toilet is only four steps from the bed. or two steps from the sofa. However, at home, everything is in a different room, the bed, tv, fridge, bathroom, and water cooler are all in different rooms at opposite corners of the house. Also, while the hospital is empty and free of obstacles, walking around the house requires navigating around the bed, running machine, computer, bookshelves, tables, the fridge, carpets shoes, etc. Simply navigating around the house was like running an obstacle course.

I rested up through Christmas and started working on Tuesday. I spent the week being very careful and conserving my strength as much as possible. But my condition is so weak that I would fall asleep immediately after getting home and go to work immediately after waking up. There was, and still is, a huge amount of stress worring about doing something stupid or slipping or getting hit by something that would break my leg again and send me back to the hospital for the third time.

This past Saturday, I went to the hospital for my first post-hospital check up. The doctor said that althought the progress is a bit slower than he would like, the bones appear to be growing together nicely and I should start putting more weight on my leg. He appears satisfied with the progress I have made in increasing the flexibility of my leg. He said that it is ok for me to drive a car. I will go back each saturday for check ups.

On another note, as I looked at my x-rays, i noticed a bright white twisty-looking thing in the middle of my thigh bone near my knee. I had never noticed that before. It was much brighter white than the screws or the titanium plate. I asked what it was. I was told that it is the end of a drill bit that broke off inside my bone when they were drilling screw holes. That broken drill bit will apparently be my friend for life, as taking it out would apparently mean slicing open the inside of my thigh, breaking or drilling a larger hole in my thigh bone, yanking out the broken piece, sewing me back up again and going through the entire healing process again. I think I will let it stay there.