A US federal judge has refused to make two summary judgments in the $280m litigation over the explosion on the 6,732-teu MSC Flaminia (built 2001) ahead of a trial next month.
In one ruling, District Judge Katherine Forrest denied Stolt-Nielsen's request for her to declare that US logistics firm BDP International should be liable for damages from the fatal containership casualty.
In the second decision, she rejected an appeal by chemicals companies Chemtura and Rubicon to have claims that their cargo may have contributed to the explosion thrown out.
The decisions involve some of the final pre-trial manoeuvres in a multi-prong legal battle aimed at determining who will foot the bill for the 2012 explosion that killed three crew members and damaged cargo and the ship. The MSC Flaminia is owned by Germany's Conti Group, managed by NSB Niederelbe and chartered by Switzerland's Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC).
Stolt, the Oslo-listed chemical shipping conglomerate, is in the key hot seat in the dispute because it was the shipper of containers of divinylbenzene (DVB) that are believed to have exploded. DVB combusts if it gets hot.
The company argues that the casualty would have been prevented if BDP, which served as a documentation processor for the shipment, had ensured that MSC's sea waybill for the cargo included instructions for proper stowage of the DVB containers. BDP and MSC have argued that the stowage instructions should have been included in the dangerous goods declaration that MSC received from Stolt.
"BDP must indemnify Stolt for all damages resulting from the casualty," Stolt's Nicoletti, Hornig & Sweeney lawyers argued.
But Forrest said Stolt's summary judgment motion appears to rehash its earlier argument that BDP's failure to include the stowage instructions caused the casualty.
"This is the claim that the court has already dismissed," she said. "The court will not revisit its prior ruling."
In the case of Chemtura and Rubicon, the two companies are fighting claims that heat emitted from their shipment of diphenylamine may have caused the DVB to explode.
They argue, among other things, that they were under no duty to warn MSC of the cargo's temperature and that stowage would not have made a difference in the incident.
Forrest said there are too many unresolved factual issues in the claims, preventing them being decided before the trial.
"The court finds that the issues raised in the motion are sufficiently complex — for instance, in terms of the interplay of a maritime regulatory scheme and the common law — that the court would benefit from the total immersion in the area that is expected to occur at the bench trial," she said.
Case title: In re MSC Flaminia
Court: US District Court for the Southern District of New York
Total claims: Estimated at $280m
Key parties: Shipowner Conti Group, manager NSB Niederelbe, charterer Mediterranean Shipping Co, chemicals shipper Stolt Tank Containers, chemical maker Deltech and various other cargo interests
Judge: US District Judge Katherine Forrest
Law firms: Hill Rivkins; Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads; Giuliano McDonnell & Perrone; Lyons & Flood; Nicoletti, Hornig & Sweeney
