The wrong man for the papers

Ryan Hurley is an Emergency Response Captain in Saint Petersburg, Florida — the person who actually drives the boat when someone is taking on water. He holds no managerial position, keeps no royalty records, and has no authority over branding. The two claims surviving in the federal case are the timing of de-branding a vessel under the Lanham Act and an allegedly cancelled $24,000 royalty check. Hurley’s connection to either, by his sworn account: none.

“I am not a party to this litigation. I have no knowledge of, and no involvement in, the two surviving claims in this action.”Ryan Hurley · Rule 45 objections · February 17, 2026

How he got here anyway

On February 2, 2026, after receiving what he described as “two letters, one from each side griping about the other,” Magistrate Judge Locke issued a scheduling order DE 310 capping each side at ten depositions, seven hours each, within 30 miles of the witness’s home. Hurley appears on the court’s schedule as Item F — drawn, the order notes, from Sea Tow’s own party correspondence. Nine days later, Sea Tow served him with a non-party subpoena as well — making him the man counted twice in a campaign that, in total, ran to 23 depositions against a limit of ten. He responded the way the rules contemplate: precise, polite, on time, and unambiguous. His docket, opened when Sea Tow moved to compel in Florida, is 8:2026mc00010 (M.D. Fla.).

The arithmetic

Six party depositions already scheduled. Seventeen non-party subpoenas served February 5 and 10, 2026. Twenty-three total, against a court order permitting ten — without leave of court, which Federal Rule 30(a)(2)(A)(i) requires. The subpoenas demanded records from June 26, 2020 to the present: five and a half years of documents for a case about sixty days of fees and a paint job. On February 18, 2026, an emergency motion followed Doc. 311, and the campaign was temporarily stayed — a freeze the court lifted on February 25, letting the subpoenas proceed under strict confidentiality restrictions DE 314. Discovery as a weapon; witnesses as hostages — those are our words. The math, however, is the court’s.