Don’t Blame Us for the Wreck. You Hired the Captain, Boy Scouts Say

Pearson 424 Lost During a Youth Charter in U.S. Virgin Islands

Peter Swanson Sep 10

Don’t blame us because you lost your boat, the Boy Scouts of America says, even though we were chartering her for our adventure-at-sea program: The skipper was to blame for the accident, and he was working for you, not us.

The Boy Scouts also advanced a couple of technical arguments for why a lawsuit against them should be thrown out of court. They are apparently arguing the suit was filed a day after the statute of limitations had expired, and, besides, it should have been filed in a county in Florida, not the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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On July 17, 2023, Libbie Oliver’s Pearson 424 ran into a prominent reef of the island of St. John. According to Oliver’s lawsuit, filed on July 17, 2025, the captain was at fault, and he had been recommended by the Boy Scouts. Oliver also said the organization had failed to properly advise her about insurance.

The boat, named Amokura, remained stranded on Johnson Reef until she was ultimately destroyed by a storm in September 2023. Oliver wants the Scouts to compensate her for loss of the vessel, which she alleges happened when the captain stepped away and left one of the scouts at the helm.

Kid Left at Helm Runs Charter Boat Onto Reef for a Total Loss Peter Swanson   ·   Jul 26 Read full story

Lawyers for the Scouts argued:

Captain Timothy Frances Styles was hired by plaintiff making him plaintiff’s employee. The vessel grounded while under the command and supervision of Captain Styles. As such, the claims and damages alleged by plaintiff relate to the actions or inactions of plaintiff’s employee. Therefore, the claims brought against BSA must be dismissed with prejudice.

Opposing lawyers also argued that, under the contract between Oliver and the Scouts, disputes were to be decided according to Florida law and, if need be, adjudicated in a court in Monroe County in the Florida Keys. The also said:

Plaintiff failed to mitigate her damages by failing to engage a salvor/tow company to remove the vessel from its strand causing additional damages. Plaintiff was contributorily negligent as she failed to properly vet, train and/or supervise Captain Sayles and/or remove the vessel from its strand.

In her suit, Oliver argued that she couldn’t get Amokura towed off the reef because the recovery wasn’t covered under an insurance policy obtained from Offshore Risk Management, a company recommended to her by the Scouts. The scouts deny having made such a recommendation.

In their answer to the suit, the Scouts’ lawyers also said that both Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands have a two-year statute of limitations on this type of action, which suggests that with both events—the wreck and the filing of suit—happening on July 17, the filing actually happened one day after the two-year statute had expired.

A lawyer who has nothing to do with the case suggested reasons why the statute-of-limitations article may not succeed. He said interpretation depends on individual court rules about counting time and whether weekends and holidays are included. Every state has slightly different language, he said.

Also, because the drama revolving around Amokura’s grounding continued for many days afterward, until her destruction, there is leeway as to when to begin the statute-of-limitations countdown.

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