The legal battle over the recent Suez Canal blockage has reached an impasse after an Egyptian appeals court declined to make a decision Monday.
The appeals court said it does not have the jurisdiction to make a decision regarding the Suez Canal Authority's financial demands over the disruption.
The appeals chamber of the Ismailia Economic Court said it is referring the case to a lower court, which can decide on the legality of the seizure of the ship and the SCA's demands to uphold financial claims.
The SCA and the owner of the container vessel that blocked the waterway in March are still in dispute over who was at fault. Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the ship's Japanese owner, has blamed the canal authority for the incident, stating that they should not have allowed the vessel to transit the waterway given the bad weather.
The operator of the vessel, Taiwan-based shipping company Evergreen Marine Corp., said the Ever Given was overcome by strong winds when it entered the canal. The company said it had recovered the vessel's black box, which recorded a debate between canal pilots that guided the ship when the grounding happened.
Meanwhile, the SCA had demanded that the owner of the vessel pay $916 million in compensation related to losses incurred during the blockage. The amount was later lowered to $550 million. The SCA said the amount will be used to cover salvage operations, the costs of stalled canal traffic and lost transit fees for the six days the ship was blocking the waterway.
The SCA also seized the Ever Given, which is currently being anchored in a holding lake within the canal. Shoei Kisen Kaisha had filed an appeal to a lower court's decision to bound the vessel. The appeal was denied and the vessel was left under the SCA's custody until the dispute is resolved.
The Ever Given slammed into the banks of a single-lane waterway of the canal on its way to Rotterdam on March 23. For six days, a massive fleet of tugboats and heavy equipment was used to try and free the massive vessel. The SCA said Monday that one of the salvage boats had capsized resulting in the death of one worker.
