A French court ruled today that oil giant Total SA was responsible for the 1999 sinking of the Maltese-registered tanker Erika, and ordered it to pay millions of euros in damages for one of France's worst environmental disasters.
Total, which chartered the rusting tanker, was fined 375,000 euros ($556,100) and told to pay a share of nearly 200 million euros in damages to civil parties, including the French state.
It was the first time a French court had held the charterer of a tanker responsible for pollution caused through shipwreck.
Rina, the Italian maritime certification company that declared the vessel seaworthy, and the ship's owner and manager were also held responsible. Eleven others, including the ship's captain, were found not guilty.
The defendants could face hundreds of millions of euros in further damages after the court said environmental organisations could sue them over the ecological impact of the disaster.
Total said it was considering an appeal and the firm's lawyers said the ruling was out of kilter with international norms on shipping regulation but environmental groups like Greenpeace and plaintiffs welcomed the decision.
"It is a very severe warning to careless transport groups, to the floating garbage cans that cross the seas, often in total impunity," said Segolene Royal, former Socialist presidential candidate and head of the coastal Poutou-Charentes region that was badly hit by the accident. "It's a big legal step."
The Erika broke in two and sank in heavy seas in the Bay of Biscay some 70 km (45 miles) off the French coast on Dec. 12, 1999, pouring 20,000 tonnes of toxic fuel oil into the sea.
The accident fouled 400 km of beaches and shoreline, crippled local industries including fishing, tourism and salt production and killed tens of thousands of seabirds.
The case finally came to trial in February 2007, just as Total announced record annual profits of 12 billion euros.
Before the ruling, civil parties had been demanding up to 1 billion euros in damages after 270,000 tonnes of waste, made up of fuel oil, seawater, sand and stones had to be treated in an operation that already cost Total some 200 million euros.
The Erika trial was one of the biggest environmental cases to come to court in France, encouraging hopes among green groups that polluters would be held accountable for damage to the natural world as well as to business and economic interests.
Total argued that it chartered the ship in good faith, relying on official documentation certifying it as seaworthy.
"All the oil companies are going to have to get round a table to work out what the consequences are," Total's lawyer Daniel Soulez-Lariviere told reporters after the verdict.
The trial lifted the lid on a murky world of offshore- registered tankers and labyrinthine ownership arrangements that made it difficult to establish responsibility for the disaster.
Total was accused of marine pollution, deliberately failing to take measures to prevent the pollution and complicity in endangering human life, a charge of which it was found not guilty.
Plaintiffs accused Total of negligence in hiring the ship and of acting too slowly when the accident happened.
It said it learned that the ship's internal structures were corroded only as a result of an examination after the accident.