Angler Sues to Get Prize That Got Away : Court: A Hawaiian fisherman who placed second seeks to get $40,000 in prize money from contest’s Costa Mesa organizers, who had originally said he’d won.

SANTA ANA — They say you can’t win for losing, but Juan Waroquiers believes he can.

The angler from Hawaii says that even though he didn’t catch the biggest fish on the first day of Bisbee’s Black and Blue Marlin Jackpot Tournament last October, tournament organizers said he did. Now he wants the $40,000 in prize money.

It’s a sore point for the Bisbee family of Costa Mesa, who admit to making a clerical error that was quickly detected. Now they are defendants in a lawsuit filed by the second-place fisherman.

The Bisbees say that when they compiled the final list of winners from daily tallies during their 14th annual competition, they skipped over Mark Gain, 24, of San Diego, who caught a 350-pound marlin. They mistakenly declared Waroquiers the winner for his 344-pound fish and presented him with a blowup of a handwritten check at a closing-day banquet.

As the soon as the banquet ended, Gain’s father, Robert, said he approached the organizers to alert them to the mistake. R. Wayne Bisbee, 31, the head of the tournament, said he checked the records and found Mark Gain was indeed the winner. Bisbee said they simply had overlooked his fish when scanning the results.

“Waroquiers had the second biggest fish. The public and the winner knew it from the daily posting,” Bisbee said. “We flat-out made a mistake, but it’s not a $40,000 mistake.”

An attorney for Waroquiers filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court on Monday alleging breach of contract, negligence and misrepresentation, among other things.

Waroquiers “was declared the winner of the daily jackpot for October 26, 1994, . . . and was presented with a facsimile check in the amount of $40,000,” attorney Jonathan C. Cavett stated in the complaint.

“The defendants have refused to make payment as promised,” Cavett said. The attorney said there was no daily listing of winners and declined to discuss the case until he reached his client.

Waroquiers is asking for $40,000 plus legal and travel expenses. Contestants paid $5,000 to enter the three-day contest, and an additional $500 to enter the daily competitions. The overall winner, Joe Gentile of Chatsworth, and his crew took home $591,710 in cash and prizes after catching a 993-pound marlin.

The fishing contest is advertised as the “richest all billfish tournament in the world,” because it awards more than $1 million in prizes. It is one of many held in the marlin-laden waters around Cabo San Lucas.

Bisbee said he was sorry Waroquiers had been disappointed by the contest.

“We offered him free entries into this year’s tournament, but he doesn’t want them,” Bisbee said. In the future, Bisbee said, they will use a computer program to track results.

Waroquiers could not be reached for comment.