The Spanish Shipping Law 14/2014 (Ley de Navegación Marítima; hereinafter, LNM), which was published in the Official Gazette on 25 July 2014 and came into force on 25 September 2014, ends the duality of legal regimes in what concerns collisions that existed prior to its promulgation, as article 339 establishes that collisions will be ruled by the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules in Collision Matters, signed in Brussels on 23 September 1910, by other International Conventions in force (the 1952 International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to Civil Jurisdiction in Matters of Collision, the 1952 International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules relating to Criminal Jurisdiction in Matters of Collision and Other Incidents of Navigation, and the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea) and by articles 339 to 345 of the Spanish Shipping Law.
Pursuant to said legal regime, in the event of a collision resulting from shared fault, fault-based liability proportional to the degree of responsibility of each vessel shall apply, as established in the Convention of 1910. This lifts the objective criterion set out in the Commercial Code, which placed the responsibility for damages with both vessels, independently from the degree of fault of each of them.
It is to be noted that if the vessels involved in a collision have a pilot on-board exercising his duties, his presence does not exempt the captains of liability, but they shall have a right to receive compensation, where applicable, from the pilot.