One of problems with having Wolverine in so many books and having so many different people writing him, is that the character starts to have a wildly inconsistent personality. I could see this fitting better with some writer's Wolverine better than others, but it's pretty off from how I see the character.
That being said, while this is an extreme, it's not entirely off base. From the scans at least, it seems like while the guy who Wolverine kills may have tried to be a better person after his mistake, Dead Guy never directly atoned for what he did. Dead Guy just lived on with the benefits gained from his misdeed and apparently let everyone think he was a great guy. It seems like most of the time when Wolverine messes up, he actually goes back to the actual misdeed and takes on the hardship of making things right (as in something like "Wolverine: Manifest Destiny").
However, if this is the case, it would have made more sense to force Dead Guy into some sort of public confession and maybe to force him to give up any profit Dead Guy gained from the fisherman's death.
So yeah, I'm going with the conclusion that this story blows.