After a New York District Court decided on September 10 that, Stolt and Deltech are responsible for the explosion and losses of the MSC Flaminia fire on July 2012, which killed 3 crewmembers, Stolt expressed its disagreement with the ruling.
Namely, the court decided that MSC is not liable for the explosion and losses of the MSC Flaminia. Instead, Daltech and Stolt are responsible for the accident.
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The court noted that Stolt has 45% responsibility, while Deltech is responsible by 55%. Thus, the financial responsibility for the cargo loss was assigned to Stolt and Deltech.
Stolt said that the company is disappointed with the ruling that found Deltech, and Stolt responsible for the incident.
The company informed that it will continue to work the case, but as a lawsuit is ongoing it could not make any further comment at this time.
As the court said, there is factual support that Deltech breached several duties of care under COGSA, general maritime law, and tort principles.
Deltech breached its duties by allowing a shipment of DVB80 to be booked in June for departure from NOT and compounded this error by allowing early filling of Tanks I, J, and K.
It also failed to take actions it could have taken to ensure measurement of the temperature of the ISO containers before loading onto the Flaminia, or recalling the Tanks before loading aboard the vessel altogether.
