These were three joined appeals in cassation against the judgment of the Rennes Court of Appeal, 30 March 1988, brought by Le Comptoir Agricole Français, Hamburger Phoenix, and La Fédérale de Zurich (the appellants).

The ship Kirsten X, owned by Ove Skou, received a cargo of bags of powdered milk in the port of Newark (United States) bound for the port of Saint-Malo (France). On arrival, the cargo was found to have suffered water damage and some of the bags were torn. The appellants and their insurers and reinsurers sued the master of the ship, Ove Skou, and its insurer, Foreningen Skuld. Ove Skou applied to constitute a limitation fund.

The Court of Appeal held that Ove Skou was entitled to limit its liability on the basis that, with regard to the lack of lining of the 'deep tanks' of the ship, it was the master's responsibility to take the necessary precautions, since his attention had been drawn to the importance of this equipment by a clause of the charterparty. The master could not ignore the risks of an insufficiency in this regard. The fault was personal to him and was not that of the shipowner.

Held: Cassation.

Article 1 of the LLMC 1957 provides that the owner of the ship cannot limit its liability if it has committed a personal fault, in particular with regard to the equipment of the ship, since it is the owner's responsibility to maintain a cargoworthy ship. By ruling thus, without investigating whether the shipowner had made available to the master the means to meet the stipulations of the charterparty with regard to the lining of the tanks, the Court of Appeal gave no legal basis for its decision.

For these reasons, the judgment under appeal is struck down and annulled in its entirety, the case and the parties are returned to the position they were in before the aforementioned judgment, and the case is referred to the Rouen Court of Appeal to be decided correctly.