Friday, July 04, 2008 Company told to pay 2 survivors of Orient sinking, parents who lost daughter By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
THE Regional Trial Court (RTC) has ruled against Sulpicio Lines Inc. in yet another civil case stemming from the 1998 sinking of their previous flag carrier, the mv Princess of the Orient.
Judge Ramon Codilla, in an 11-page decision dated May 15, 2008, directed the shipping company to pay P550,000 to an army officer who survived the tragedy, P200,000 to another survivor and P1 million to a couple who lost a daughter.
Codilla levied the shipping company five percent of the total award as the cost of the suit, as he ruled that the sinking “amounted to gross negligence and incompetence on the part of the crew.”
Responsible
“The owners and managers of an establishment or enterprise are... responsible for the damage caused by their employees,” he added.
Sulpicio Lines Inc. has given notice that it will appeal the ruling. This is the second ruling issued against Sulpicio Lines Inc. for the 1998 sinking of the Orient, in which at least 150 persons died.
The other ruling came from RTC Judge Estela Alma Singco, who directed the firm to pay private school teacher Verna Unabia over P6 million for the death of her husband, a seaman.
Judge Singco dismissed the shipping company’s argument that the sinking was due to a greater unforeseen force, adding that for an argument like this to suffice, the shipping company must show that it was otherwise faultless in its operation.
She said the evidence pointed to the contrary.
Army Major Victorio Karaan Jr., Ely Liva and spouses Army 2nd Lieutenant Napoleon and Technical Sergeant Herminia Labraque jointly filed the second case.
Third case
They were represented by lawyer Gregorio Fuentes. Fuentes also represented Unabia in the case before Judge Singco. Karaan, in fact, testified in Unabia’s favor during the hearing.
A third case is pending before Judge Generosa Labra, who presides over Branch 23 of the Cebu RTC.
Both rulings came out in May this year, a few months shy of the Orient’s 10th year under water, and close to a month before Sulpicio Lines’ new flagship, the mv Princess of the Stars, sank in stormy weather off Romblon.
In finding in favor of the plaintiffs, Codilla also dismissed the shipping company’s argument of force majeure. Instead, he took into account the findings of the Coast Guard’s Board of Marine Inquiry (MBI), who investigated the Orient’s sinking.
“The board was able to establish some facts to warrant our findings that indeed not only negligence existed on the part of the key personnel but also incompetence,” Codilla, quoting the BMI results, wrote in the ruling.
Calculation
The Orient’s chief mate, for example, admitted under oath that he “was not able to make a stability calculation of the ship vis-à-vis her cargo.”
It was also found that he “failed to execute and supervise the actual abandon ship procedures” and that “there was no announcement through the public address system to abandon ship, no orderly distribution of life jackets or orderly launching of life rafts.”
There were other failings assigned to other crewmembers.
As for the shipping company’s claim that the sinking was caused exclusively by gigantic waves that battered the ship until it listed to one side and sank, Judge Codilla cited the testimony of a survivor.
He noted how Labrague testified that after he jumped from the ship, he and his wife swam to a life raft and waited there until they were rescued the following day.
The judge found it difficult to believe that a life raft could withstand the battering of waves that a 13,734-gross-ton-vessel could not. There must have been another factor behind the sinking: “gross negligence and incompetence on the part of the crew.”
“Under Article 2180 of the New Civil Code, the obligations imposed by Article 2176 are demandable not only for one’s own acts or omissions but also those of persons for whom one is responsible,” Codilla said, in ruling against the shipping lines.
