The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has dealt a definitive regulatory upheaval to risk management in the port public domain of the archipelago. The Administrative Contentious Chamber has fully revoked the first instance ruling that exempted the shipping agent Cargo Lanzarote from paying the rescue costs, ruling that the claim of 7.15 million euros made by the public entity Puertos Canarios is lawful. The ruling ends eight years of litigation arising from the sinking of the fleet of barges, pontoons, and tugs of the Korean shipowner K-Marine during the Emma storm in February 2018. The judicial resolution dismantles the doctrine of civil prescription that the defense of the commercial shipping agent had relied on in ordinary courts. The TSJC rules that the economic claim does not correspond to a common non-contractual liability subject to a one-year expiration period under the Civil Code, but rather to a strict legal obligation derived from the Law of Ports of the Canary Islands. This conceptual distinction safeguards the authority of the autonomous government to directly recover the costs of removing floating debris, hydrocarbon decontamination, and repair of the damaged port infrastructure in Fuerteventura. The Chamber bases the financial penalty on the neglect of preventive requirements issued by the port authority prior to the impact of the storm. The ruling establishes that the operators of the vessels ignored the explicit orders to strengthen the mooring lines and secure the buoyancy of the platforms intended for construction contracts on the coastline of West Africa. By disregarding the public weather alert, the court dismisses the occurrence of force majeure claimed by the shipping agent, determining that the effects of the storm were foreseeable and mitigable through a minimum technical diligence. The public bill for the disaster at Gran Tarajal encompasses the costs of heavy engineering and bacterial bioremediation work that the Canary agencies assumed subsidiarily due to the inaction of the Asian shipping company. The operations to fragment the submerged hulls required the hiring of companies specialized in diamond wire cutting, in an environment affected by diesel spills that forced the closure of the drinking water intakes of the coastal locality. With the imposition of trial costs on the plaintiff company, Canary jurisprudence sets a binding precedent in the Atlantic: shipping agencies retain joint and financial responsibility for the commercial operations of foreign fleets registered in their consignment records.
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