The MV Camuri stranded at the port of Miragone in Haiti in 1992. Valholding SA (the defendant) hired Fernando Lopez (the plaintiff) to refloat the vessel and tow it to the port of Port au Prince. The plaintiff performed the work from 7 March-14 April 1993. The plaintiff later claimed for remuneration for salvage. The Maritime Court applied the provisions related to salvage contained in arts 1490-1501 of the Code of Commerce (CCom), which mirror arts 1-11 and 14 of the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law respecting Assistance and Salvage at Sea 1910 (the Salvage Convention 1910).

In order to determine whether the services provided by the plaintiff could be considered salvage, the Court analysed art 1490 CCom (art 1 of the Salvage Convention 1910), stating that, for an operation to be considered as salvage, there must be a situation of danger threatening the property. Such danger must result from the ship's navigation and must exist at the moment when salvage is required. The Maritime Court observed that the vessel had been at the stranding place for over 9 months and that the cyclone season was over when it was refloated, which was the main argument put forward by the plaintiff to justify a situation of danger. The Court concluded that there was no real danger for this vessel when the refloating operations were performed. Therefore, no remuneration for salvage could be granted as the refloating activities were executed under a contract of services for which the plaintiff had been paid. The plaintiff appealed the decision, alleging that the ship was in danger because it could have become a total loss if the services were not provided.

Held: The Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), acting as Court of Maritime Appeals, affirmed the decision. The SCJ stated that, according to art 1490 CCom (art 1 of the Salvage Convention 1910), the existence of danger is an essential constituent of maritime salvage. The legislation, however, does not define what danger is in this context. The SCJ explained that commercial doctrine refers to some adjectives to describe its intensity, gravity, imminence etc, concluding that the inherent danger that requires a maritime salvage must be actual, concrete, serious and objective. It means that the danger is effectively manifest or it is starting to be manifest. If the danger is over, it is not actual and does not justify salvage. The danger must be also concrete in the sense that it does not just involve the common risks of navigation but a specific danger. In this case, the fact that the vessel was stranded on a coral reef was certainly a danger, but such a risk cannot be considered as an actual danger, a condition required to qualify as salvage, because the vessel was in that position for over 9 months without suffering further damage. Therefore, the services provided by the plaintiff did not qualify as salvage.