Adolfo Pérez and 14 other seafarers employed on the fishing vessels Villalonga and Promar XXII claimed remuneration for salvage against their owners, Villagreste SA and Mimdam SA. These two vessels were working together under the orders of the master of the Promar XXII, when the Maritime Authority of Uruguay ordered him to provide assistance to the MV 707 Hong Jin. The two vessels towed the stranded ship a distance of five miles, a manoeuvre that took over two hours. The claimants did not receive remuneration for this operation. The first instance Court dismissed the claim based on the lack of legal standing of the defendants. The seafarers appealed.

Held: The Court of Civil Appeals (CCA) affirmed the decision.

The CCA stated that there are three fundamental requirements to qualify a maritime operation as assistance or salvage. First, the assistance supposes the service of a ship to another ship; there is no assistance where the service is provided from the shore. Second, the assisted ship must be in a situation of danger. However, no imminent danger is required. It is sufficient for there to be a possible and foreseeable danger, without the need to distinguish if the danger threatens the crew, the ship or the cargo. Third, the service provided must not be the result of a previous contractual obligation. The latter requirement is necessary to differentiate assistance from towage. The confusion between these concepts is explained by the fact that in most situations, assistance is provided by towing the endangered vessel. The criterion for distinguishing the two operations depends on the condition of the towed ship. It is assistance and not towage when the assisted vessel is in danger, and the towage operation attempts to rescue it. The tasks performed by the claimants, in this case, may fall outside the typical obligations of a maritime labour contract, but they must execute them if their master so orders.

According to the three requirements explained above, the situation under analysis must be held to be maritime assistance governed by the Code of Commerce (CCom) where the claimants performed these tasks following the master's instructions, with whom they had a contractual link, and where the scope of execution was to assist a third party. The plaintiffs were not hired by the owner or the master of the assisted vessel. They were not ordered to do so by the Maritime Authority. The case law has established that it is the assisted ship that owes the remuneration to the salving ship. The remuneration for assistance should not be considered as wages because, in the assistance to ships, there is no relation of subordination nor claim against the employer. The remuneration must be claimed against the owner of the assisted vessel with whom there is no labour relationship. In this lawsuit, there is no connection between the claimants and the party really obligated to pay the remuneration.

This construction is consistent with the provision of the CCom, that refers to the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Respecting Assistance and Salvage at Sea 1910 (the Salvage Convention 1910). Article 2 states that every act of assistance with a useful result ('no cure no pay') gives a right to equitable remuneration. Article 6 states that the amount of the remuneration is fixed by the parties, or, failing agreement, by a judge and in respect to the proportion that must be distributed among the salvors. Article 6.3 refers to the distribution of the remuneration between the shipowner, the master and other persons in the service of each salving vessel. Similarly, art 10 of the International Convention on Salvage 1989 (the Salvage Convention 1989) establishes the master's obligation to provide assistance to persons in danger of being lost at sea. Article 12 provides the right to a reward for a useful result. The Convention also establishes guidelines to set the amount of the reward in art 13, and art 15 states that the apportionment of the reward among those at the service of each of the salving ships will be regulated by the law of the flag of that ship. Therefore, the debtor of the remuneration for assistance, according to the CCom and the international treaties, on an integral and harmonic interpretation, is the owner of the assisted ship, not the owners of the salving ships.