This was an appeal from the judgment of the 1st Commercial Court of first instance (20 January 2015, 2015/36-2015/36).

The plaintiff applied for provisional attachment of a Russian-registered ship, claiming that the defendant owed it USD 45,909.08 due to bunkers supplied to the vessel pursuant to the master's request on 16 April 2014. In particular, the plaintiff claimed that the ship was refuelled three times in total. The plaintiff claimed that its invoices in respect of the bunkers supplied to the defendant's ship were due. Hence the plaintiff argued for the imposition of a maritime lien on the defendant's ship due to its maritime claim, according to arts 1352.1.1.l and 1353 of the Turkish Commercial Code (the TCC) [which is based on arts 1.1.l and 2 of the Arrest Convention 1999].

The Court of first instance found that all bunker fuel purchases were made on behalf of Kent Shipping & Chartering, as seen in the email correspondence. The Court further found that the owner of the ship, who is not the operator, cannot be responsible for the bunker fuel costs that the operator has to incur constantly within the scope of its routine activity; and also found that there was no evidence that the owner of the ship had received the bunker fuel in the capacity of an operator, or that the fuel was purchased on the owner's behalf. 

The Court of first instance observed that the invoices submitted for the bunker fuel purchases did not contain the debtor's signature, so could not be accepted as evidence showing the existence of the receivable. Consequently, the Court found that the plaintiff's claim did not meet the requirements of arts 1353 and 1369 of the TCC [which is based on art 3 of the Arrest Convention 1999]. Hence the Court rejected the placement of a provisional attachment on the ship.

The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Held: The appeal is dismissed. The Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the Court of first instance.