A Maltese tuna rancher can continue legal action against marine conservation group Sea Shepherd in the UK, a high court has ruled.
The company claimed it incurred €1 million in damages
Fish and Fish won an appeal after a UK court last year threw out a lawsuit against Sea Shepherd in which the Maltese company sought damages for an incident that happened in 2010.
The company claimed it incurred €1 million in damages after the Steve Irwin, a ship belonging to Sea Shepherd, rammed their tuna pen on the high seas. The incident formed part of the marine group’s Operation Blue Rage campaign against blue fin tuna fishing.
Two vessels working for Fish and Fish were towing cages containing live blue fin tuna from Libya to its fish farm in Malta when the highly publicised incident happened.
The company claimed that some 33 tonnes of tuna from a total catch of 64 tonnes were released into the sea by divers from the Steve Irwin.
Some of the Maltese crew were also injured.
Fish and Fish took legal action in London against Sea Shepherd UK, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Paul Watson, who skippered the ship and is the founder of the conservation group. Captain Watson is also a director of the UK branch.
The court had dismissed the case because it found Sea Shepherd UK not to be a party in the campaign and actions conducted by the Steve Irwin even though it was the registered owner of the vessel.
However, the high court overturned the decision, saying the UK wing of Sea Shepherd was jointly responsible for the direct action that led to the incident.
Sea Shepherd UK (SSUK) is one of a number of charities in different countries that fund the marine organisation. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is based in the US and was responsible for Operation Blue Rage.
In its ruling the court said that when the vessel and its crew embarked upon the attack Mr Watson was still a director of the UK branch.
It was “a status which he could not shake off”, the court said, asking whether it was “open for him to choose, from minute to minute, the capacity in which he was acting”.
“Both SSCS and SSUK wanted such attacks to occur… Mr Watson, it is accepted, was the overall directing mind of the operation and, in my judgment, might well be said to have been acting with the status in each organisation which, in fact, he held,” the court said.
The appeals court gave weight among other considerations to contradictory evidence by Sea Shepherd members in a separate case filed by Japanese whalers in the US.
While the activists in the Malta case claimed the UK branch had nothing to do with the incident because it was not party to the US-based campaign, in the Japanese case they claimed campaigns were planned and executed by the country branches.
According to lawyer John Refalo, legal counsel to the Maltese company, the UK appeals court “saw through this strategy” and ruled that English courts had jurisdiction to hear and decide the case.
He said Fish and Fish will continue its legal action.
The appeals court ruling came on the eve of this year’s blue fin tuna fishing season in the Mediterranean, which opens next week.
Conservation groups claim that overfishing has depleted blue fin tuna stocks and have long called for a ban. Under strict international and EU rules, tuna ranchers can continue fishing but member countries have to monitor operations and record catches.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com