The Court of first instance ordered Naviera Armas SA to compensate the plaintiff passengers and their travel agency, France Patois Tour SL. Naviera Armas SA appealed, arguing that the entity that owned, managed, and operated the Assalama, in which the international maritime transport contracted by the plaintiffs was carried out, was Armas Cruceros SA. Naviera Armas SA had no relationship to the passengers' contracts.

Held: Appeal upheld.

Article 1.1 of the Athens Convention 1974 provides:

(a) 'carrier' means a person by or on behalf of whom a contract of carriage has been concluded, whether the carriage is actually performed by him or by a performing carrier;

(b) 'performing carrier' means a person other than the carrier, being the owner, charterer or operator of a ship, who actually performs the whole or a part of the carriage.

The first instance judgment dismissed Naviera Armas SA's objections, finding that the plaintiffs' tickets and boarding passes were issued by Naviera Armas SA, despite taking into consideration the rest of the documentary evidence provided.

However, this Court did not find any evidence linking Naviera Armas SA with the transport. We have thoroughly examined all the documents, and although there is a printout of a passenger and vehicle ticket, containing the logo of Naviera Armas SA and the web page 'navieraarmas.com', the authentic documents that evidence the transport between Tarfaya, Morocco, and Puerto del Rosario, Fuerteventura, and vice versa, despite also including the logo of Naviera Armas SA, unequivocally linked the entity 'Armas Cruceros S.A.', as stated at the top of these documents, next to the corporate ID of this entity. Apart from this, if one takes into consideration the rest of the documentary evidence, part of it provided by the plaintiffs, in which Armas Cruceros SA acknowledged that it was the company that managed the Assalama, assumed responsibility for the accident, issued the list of passengers and vehicles, as well as the incident report form delivered to the plaintiffs so that they could formulate their claims, and which appeared to be signed by them, as well as the documentation provided by Navieras Armas SA - the registration of the ship, in which Armas Cruceros SA appears as the registered owner, as well as the receipt signed by the plaintiffs in which they state that they received different amounts from Armas Cruceros SA as payment on account for the damages suffered as a result of the Assalama ship incident on 30 April 2008 in Tarfaya, it cannot but be understood that the only entity against which the lawsuit was appropriate was Armas Cruceros SA.

Despite the fact that some confusion may have been induced due to the use of the logo of Naviera Armas SA on the tickets issued, the plaintiffs had sufficient information to be able to have properly filed their claims against Armas Cruceros SA, and not against Naviera Armas SA.