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X-Press Feeders says judgment undermines “limitation of liability,”
View(s):By Tharushi Weerasinghe
The Singapore-based shipping company has failed to pay the first instalment of compensation due this week under a Supreme Court order requiring US$1 billion in damages for the 2021 X-Press Pearl disaster, petitioners told the court on Thursday.
“They have not complied with the order requiring them to pay US$250 million this week,” said Dr. Ravindranath Dabare, Director and Counsel of the Centre for Environmental Justice, which is one of the petitioners. He told the court that the company had not notified it of any refusal but had failed to act on the ruling.
At Thursday’s hearing, the lawyers who previously represented the foreign companies—including De Seram Chambers, President’s Counsel Dr. Umesh Silva, and Harsha Amarasinghe—informed the court they would no longer appear on behalf of the international firms. On behalf of the petitioners, Dr Dabare noted that neither X-Press Feeders nor its affiliated companies, including Sea Consortium, had accepted the verdict.
The Supreme Court ruled that, by failing to comply with its orders, the matter must now be referred to the Attorney General for necessary action. If court orders are violated, the AG has the power to institute contempt proceedings, file criminal charges, and bring the companies before Sri Lankan courts with assistance from Interpol if required.
“We asked the court to direct the Attorney General to deal with the violation and to institute contempt of court proceedings,” Dr. Dabare said, adding, “They can’t say these people are absconding or hiding because this is a large company.” He noted that the court had also indicated the government should pursue the matter diplomatically through ambassadors.
In July, the Supreme Court ordered X-Press Feeders to pay US$1 billion in compensation within a year, beginning with a US$250 million instalment due this week. The court also directed the company “to make such other and further payments” in the future as required.
Dr. Dabare said the company “might honour now that we are pursuing actions against their non-compliance,” stressing that reciprocity of court orders—not international conventions—applies in this instance.
X-Press Feeders, however, has publicly rejected the order. In an interview with AFP on September 23, chief executive Shmuel Yoskovitz said the judgment “undermines” the long-standing principle of limitation of liability in maritime trade. “We are not paying because the whole base of maritime trade is based on the limitation of liability. This judgment undermines this limitation of liability,” he said.
Yoskovitz warned that any payment could “set a dangerous precedent” for how future maritime incidents are resolved. He argued that without liability caps, global insurance premiums could rise sharply, costs which would ultimately be borne by consumers.
He said the company had already spent US$170 million on wreck removal, seabed and beach clean-up, and compensation for fishermen. While apologising for the incident, Yoskovitz maintained that any further payment must be “full and final” and within the framework of international marine conventions. “We are not trying to hide… We are willing to pay more, but it has to be under certain marine conventions and an amount that is full and final, and then it can be settled, and we can move on,” he said. “But to live under this hanging guillotine – it is simply impossible to operate like this.”
The MV X-Press Pearl, operated by the company, sank off Colombo in June 2021 following a fire believed to have been triggered by a nitric acid leak. Its cargo included 81 containers of hazardous goods, lead ingots, and hundreds of tonnes of plastic pellets. It had been denied entry by ports in Qatar and India before reaching Sri Lanka.
The sinking caused what has been described as Sri Lanka’s worst marine pollution disaster. Plastic pellets inundated an 80km stretch of coastline, and fishing along the western seaboard was banned for months.
| South Korean agency to carry out forensic audit on deleted emails By Ranjith Padmasiri A South Korean state agency has been selected to conduct a forensic audit of the deleted email communications between the X-Press Pearl ship’s captain and the local agents, Sea Consortium Lanka (Pvt Ltd). | |
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