The $44.9m judgment against a Vafias-linked tanker that was deemed only 20% at fault for a collision with a warship has been paid seven years after the casualty.
Energetic Tank, the registered owner of the 50,100-dwt product tanker Alnic MC (built 2008), fought and lost an appeals court battle over its liability in the case.
Lawyers for the US Justice Department told a federal court in New York that the October 2022 judgment was paid with interest.
“There are no outstanding executions with any sheriff or marshal,” lawyers Jessica Sullivan and Thomas Brown told the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The notice that the judgment was satisfied comes as part of a long-running legal fight over a collision between the Alnic MC and the US Navy destroyer John S McCain, which killed 10 sailors and injured 41 on the warship.
The incident happened off Singapore in August 2017.
The Liberian-flag tanker was owned at the time by Energetic Tank and managed by the Vafias family’s Stealth Maritime of Greece.
As TradeWinds reported in 2022, US district judge Paul Crotty ruled that Energetic Tank would have to pay the judgment, even though the warship was mostly at fault, because it was on the hook for 20% of the $185m damage to the destroyer.
The court found that the USS John McCain was 80% responsible for the incident, but the Alnic MC required only $442,000 in repairs.
The liability breakdown led to a result that Crotty admitted was “counterintuitive”.
Energetic Tank filed two of four challenges lodged with the US Court of Appeals For the Second Circuit.
But in July, a panel of three judges swept those appeals aside.
Circuit judge John Walker wrote: “We find no error in either the district court’s apportionment of liability under Singapore law or its sovereign immunity ruling.”
Energetic Tank could have continued the appeals effort by seeking a hearing with all the judges of the Second Circuit or going to the Supreme Court for review.
And though it has instead satisfied the judgment owed to the US, the dispute over the collision continues in the district court, where other claims are being litigated in limitation of liability proceedings launched by Energetic Tank in 2018.
The Alnic MC was renamed San Remo in 2023 and is now controlled by Greece’s Universal Tanker Management, according to data from Equasis.
At the time of the incident, it was classed by Bureau Veritas and insured by the UK P&I Club.
