The shipowner's ability to cap its debt on the vessel's gross tonnage, which paradoxically shelters the small craft ideal for cutting a cable.
The convention on limitation of liability for maritime claims lets the shipowner cap its debt at an amount calculated on the vessel's gross tonnage, the threshold for breaking that limit being very high. Designed to prevent a claim from ruining an honest shipowner, it produces a perverse effect applied to submarine cables, the smaller the vessel the less it owes, when it is precisely the small craft with an opaque owner that is the ideal tool for a cut. The regime thus protects the weapon rather than the target.
Facing a cable cut by a small trawler, the operator runs into a tonnage cap far below the true extent of the damage.
plafond de tonnage, LLMC, tonnage limitation