Parents denied damages after son drowned from fishing boat
Friday 18th September 2026 on 02:30 in
Iceland
mbl.is reports that Iceland’s Court of Appeal has acquitted a fishing company and its insurer in a case brought by the parents of a fisherman who drowned after falling overboard in May 2020.
The parents sought 15 million Icelandic krónur each in compensation for non-pecuniary damage, a total of 30 million krónur.
No one witnessed the accident, and it remains unclear why the man fell into the sea. The Court of Appeal found it likely that he went overboard at about 7.44am on 18 May 2020, when his phone suddenly switched off in a way suggesting that it had fallen into the water.
The man had been officially registered as a crew member of the boat for only 13 days. His parents argued, among other things, that the safety training and instructions provided on board had been inadequate.
However, the court noted that the company was not required under the rules in force at the time to send him on a safety training course before he began work. It also found that the evidence did not show that the instructions on work and safety matters were so inadequate as to constitute gross negligence.
The court said the parents had failed to prove that a lack of safety training or an alleged design defect in the boat had contributed to their son’s death. They bore the burden of proving that the death resulted from culpable conduct for which the fishing company was responsible.
The man was off watch when he fell overboard. The court said the law did not require the captain to monitor the movements of every crew member continuously. It also found that the crew’s failure to realise sooner that the man was no longer on board did not amount to gross negligence. Even if they had realised at 10.30am that he might have fallen overboard, nearly three hours after his phone went off, the court considered it unlikely that this would have changed the outcome.
The Court of Appeal therefore upheld the Reykjavik District Court’s ruling and rejected the parents’ claims against the fishing company and the insurer.
The case had previously been heard by the Court of Appeal, but the Supreme Court annulled that ruling in March and referred the case back to the Court of Appeal.