This was an appeal in cassation from the judgment of the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal, 17 May 2002). The Société Coopérative du Lamanage des Ports de Marseille et du Golfe de Fosas (the arresting party) was a creditor of the owner of the vessel Renaissance One in respect of mooring and unmooring services carried out between July and October 2001. On 11 January 2002, the arresting party obtained an order for precautionary seizure of the vessel from the President of the Marseille Commercial Court, based on the Arrest Convention 1952 and art 29 of the Decree of 27 October 1967 amended by the Decree of 24 February 1971.

Cruise Invest One had its head office in the Marshall Islands and declared itself to be the owner of the ship - now named R One. Cruise Invest One, who acquired the vessel on 5 December 2001 in a judicial sale by decision of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar of 24 October 2001, intervened within the framework of bankruptcy proceedings commenced on 23 September 2001 in the US, and requested the retraction of the order and the lifting of the seizure. The Court of Appeal allowed the request. The arresting party appealed, criticising the Court of Appeal judgment for automatically recognising the validity of the foreign judicial sale as a fact.

The arresting party also argued that the sole purpose of the Arrest Convention 1952 is to provide security for the creditor, being a means of pressure upon the debtor and not being an action for payment the outcome of which would lead to the seizure and sale of the ship and the execution of the recalcitrant debtor. Therefore, the protective seizure of ships only requires that the arresting creditor allege that it has a maritime claim as defined in the Convention in relation to the ship, without it being necessary for the ship to be owned by its debtor, who is not necessarily the shipowner, but may be the charterer or any other person. These principles set out in Article 3 of the Convention are not contradicted by Article 9 which in no way provides that, in order to be able to seize a vessel, the obligee must prove that it is the beneficiary of a resale right under the applicable law, but is limited to indicating that the agreement itself is not capable of conferring on it such a right. By deciding that these provisions did not make it possible to carry out a protective seizure on a ship no longer belonging to the debtor of the obligation, on the sole allegation of a maritime claim relating to the ship, and that such seizure could only be authorised if the arresting party took advantage of a privileged claim within the meaning of the law of the forum, in this case French law, the Court of Appeal violated arts 3 and 9 of the Arrest Convention 1952.

Held: Appeal dismissed.

A foreign judgment produces effects in France, as a legal fact, independently of a verification of its international regularity by a procedure of recognition or exequatur. In the present case, since the authority of res judicata of the judgment of the jurisdiction of Gibraltar of 24 October 2001 ordering the seizure and the sale of the vessel at public auction was not invoked, and no measure of constraint or execution was requested in France, this decision constituted a legal fact that the French courts had to take into consideration. The Court of Appeal deduced from this correctly that Cruise Invest One had acquired ownership of the vessel following the judicial sale without the international lawfulness of the Gibraltar judgment needing to be verified.

The Court of Appeal held that, on an application of arts 3 and 9 of the Arrest Convention 1952, the seizure of a vessel no longer belonging to the debtor can be authorised only if the arresting party avails itself of a privileged claim within the meaning of the law of the forum. On the one hand, the garnishee, creditor of a former owner of the vessel, was not a creditor of its current owner; on the other hand, the privilege attached to the claim of the arresting party by application of art 31 of the Law of 3 January 1967 was extinguished by the judicial sale of the vessel. The Court of Appeal legally justified its decision.