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Tampa, FL - July 23, 2007 -- Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NASDAQ:OMEX) today filed Motions for an Extension of Time to file its responses to Claimant, Spain's, Motions for More Definite Statements filed in the three admiralty arrests which Odyssey currently has pending at the U.S. District Court that has assumed jurisdiction over the sites.
Odyssey filed these motions primarily as a result of the unexpected seizure and detention of Odyssey's survey vessel Ocean Alert by the Spanish Guardia Civil from July 12 through 18. Among other items, the Guardia Civil confiscated confidential attorney/client privileged documents as well as a laptop computer belonging to one of Odyssey's attorneys which also contained attorney/client privileged information relative to the documents being prepared for the court. To date the Guardia Civil has not yet released the hard drive of the attorney's laptop.
The detention also required two of Odyssey's lawyers to travel to Algeciras to deal with the legal issues there. The rest of Odyssey's legal team and in-house counsel have been working on issues related to the illegal boarding including flag state rights. As a result, Odyssey requested additional time to prepare its responses, but the Spanish Government refused. Consequently, Odyssey filed a motion with all three Judges in all three cases citing last week's extraordinary events and requesting more time for the preparation of additional pleadings.
"Since Spain's request, our team has been diligently working on Odyssey's responses to Spain's Motions for More Definite Statements in all three cases," said Melinda MacConnel, Esq., Odyssey's General Counsel. "Unfortunately, our legal team's focus was pulled away from this work by the recent illegal seizure and detention of the Ocean Alert and the continued blockade of our other vessel, the Odyssey Explorer. If the Spanish officials had abided by the terms of the inspection of the vessel which had been agreed to in advance, we would have had time last week to complete our responses. We had arranged for a compliant boarding with both the Judge in La Linea and the Guardia Civil but were frankly caught off guard when they reneged on the agreement and forcefully seized our vessel."