Conviction for UK oil tanker spill sets precedent
Date: 25-Jul-02
Country: UK
The agency, which is responsible for protecting the UK's coast, said the case highlighted how third parties could now be held responsible for spills.
"With 100,000 shipping movements in the Dover Straits each year to contend with it's important that we have this weapon (law) in our arsenal," the agency's enforcement officer Rob Johnson told Reuters in reference to the case.
The Captain and owner of the fishing trawler "St Jacques II", Loic Margolle, was found guilty on Monday in a magistrate court of slamming his ship into a Maltese oil tanker in March of last year.
The clash ripped a hole into the tanker, "the Gudermes", spilling 3.5 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the ocean.
Margolle pleaded guilty and was given a conditional discharge for 12 months after already being heavily fined in France for the incident, the UK agency said.
Johnson said future offences could carry maximum penalties of up to 250,000 pounds ($392,000) in a magistrate court but fines could be much higher if actions were brought in a crown or higher court.
"Effectively what this case does is it makes it an offence to put any oil into the sea, and if the owner or master of the vessel is found to be responsible they can be prosecuted," Johnson said.
"This now means that we can look at the role of a third party in an incident of this type as we weren't able to do before," he said. "In the past the legal arguments hadn't been tested."
The Channel Magistrates Court had heard how the fishing trawler was moving to fishing grounds off the Thames Estuary from Boulogne when it sailed the wrong way up a shipping lane.
