허베이 스피리트호 유류오염사고 처리상 법적 쟁점

Abstract

At the time of this paper’s publication, more than 10 years have passed since the Hebei Spirit oil spill incident. During this long period of time, the ship owner, the ship owner’s insurer, the IOPC Fund, the Korean government and the court have put in tremendous amount of effort in compensating the victims for the damages they suffered from the incident, and substantial progress to the compensation was made as a result. In an effort for compensating the victims, on 9 February 2009, the limitation of ship owner’s liability proceedings commenced at the Seosan Branch of Daejeon District Court at the request of the owner of Hebei Spirit. Although the said limitation of liability proceedings are still ongoing, the assessment decision, and the objection proceedings thereto, have been completed. In the course of the limitation of liability proceedings and the objection proceedings), various procedural and substantive legal issues were raised. In this regard, the objective of this paper is to introduce those legal issues and how they were resolved.