(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Â A father and son ended up in the burns unit of an Abu Dhabi hospital when a planned fishing trip turned disastrous after their boat burst into flames and set fire to a harbour petrol station.
A father and son ended up in the burns unit of an Abu Dhabi hospital when a planned fishing trip turned disastrous after their boat burst into flames and set fire to a harbour petrol station.
Following the near fatal accident, caused when the father began filling the boat with gas, the pair endured a lengthy court battle with the company of the petrol station where the accident took place.
The accident occurred when the impatient father, the owner of the boat, started to fill the boat's tank at the harbour pump as he refused to wait for the busy gas station attendant to assist him.
He overfilled the tank which caused the gas to leak into the engine and set the boat on fire. Flames ripped through the boat and the fire spread to the gas station, causing it to burst into flames.
The boat the father and son were travelling was gutted by the fire and the pair suffered third degree burns and were taken to a hospital and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.
The petrol station attendant was charged with negligence, which caused two people to sustain serious injuries. He was convicted by the Abu Dhabi Court of First Instance, which slapped him with a fine of Dh10,000.
The Court of Appeal, however, ruled the attendant was not guilty on the charges pressed against him, as he was busy attending to other people at the time of the accident. The court claimed it was the fault of the victim who filled the tank in haste.
Accordingly, the Court of Appeal quashed the verdict of the lower court, and acquitted the attendant.
But the case did not end there. The two burns victims filed a lawsuit at the Civil Court demanding the attendant's company pay them Dh5 million in compensation for the gutted boat and the serious injuries they sustained.
The company filed a countersuit against the boat owner, the main complainant (the father), demanding he pay Dh1.5 million in compensation.
The Court of First Instance rejected the burn victims' request for compensation, stating the cause of the fire was the petrol leak and the fumes of the gas which sparked the fire, which the worker had nothing to do with. The court also rejected requests from the company to not show the case to the Conciliation and Settlement Committee.
The case went on when the two litigants submitted a contest to the Appellate Court, which had a viewpoint contrary to that of the lower court, and asked for an expert opinion in the case.
The latter held the company responsible for the accident as it did not provide a sufficient number of workers, which prompted the complainant to fill the gas himself. In his report, the expert said the gas flowing from the petrol pump did not stop which showed there was a technical glitch in the pump nozzle. The expert also said there were no adequate arrangements for fire extinguishers on site.
In a recent hearing, the Court considered the expert's report was convincing, and accordingly ordered the company to pay the owner of the motor boat Dh300,000, the market value of his boat when it was gutted and sank in the sea. It also ordered it to pay him another Dh200,000 in indemnity for the trauma and pain he and his son had suffered. The Court also upheld the lower court's verdict on rejecting the lawsuit filed by the company against the owner of motorboat.
Published in collaboration with Abu Dhabi Judicial Department
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