PANAMA Law and Practice Contributed by: María Teresa Diaz, Nadya Price and Joaquín De Obarrio, Patton Moreno & Asvat
1. Maritime and Shipping Legislation and Regulation 1.1 Domestic Laws Establishing the Authorities of the Maritime and Shipping Courts Law 8 of 30 March 1982 (which created the Mari - time Courts and dictates the Rules of Maritime Procedure) – along with the modifications, addi - tions and deletions adopted by Law No 11 of 1986, Law No 12 of 2009, and others – estab - lishes a specialised maritime jurisdiction com - posed of two first-instance Maritime Courts, of equal standing, and a Maritime Court of Appeals with nationwide jurisdiction. The most common maritime and shipping claims are the following. • Ordinary proceedings (in personam). • Special proceedings, regarding: (a) collision; (b) ship-owner’s limitation of liability; (c) enforcement of maritime liens (in rem); (d) enforcement of a naval mortgage; (e) creditors’ concursus; (f) abbreviated proceedings seeking sum - mary judgment; and (g) special proceedings for enforcement of domestic and foreign decisions. All these claims are subject to the specialised maritime jurisdiction of the Republic of Panama. 1.2 Port State Control Port state control (PSC) inspections in Panama are carried out by technical staff of the General Directorate of Merchant Marine of the Panama Maritime Authority (PMA), which is the govern - ment entity that must guarantee compliance with the maritime conventions approved and ratified by Panama.
These inspections are carried out in accordance with the provisions of international maritime con - ventions, such as: • the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974 (SOLAS); • the International Convention for the Preven - tion of Pollution from Ships, 1973 (MARPOL); • the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers, 1978 (STCW); and • the International Ballast Water Management Convention (2004) (BWM) for the purposes of identifying deficiencies in ships visiting Pana - manian ports. Ships which may be rendered sub-standard under the terms of these conventions should take measures to remedy the deficiencies found, and the PMA inspectors will ensure that any such remedial measures are taken to safeguard human life and to guarantee safety and protec - tion of the marine environment. Panama is part of the Viña del Mar Memorandum of Agreement (the Latin American Agreement on Port State Control of Vessels) and the Tokyo Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). As such, PSC inspections are carried out following the guidelines of these two memorandums, and are also based on the guidelines established in International Maritime Organization (IMO) Reso - lution A.1138(31), adopted on 4 December 2019, updating the procedure for PSC inspections. For marine casualties such as in grounding, investigations are carried out by the PMA as the flag state. In practice, these functions are not mixed with the obligations of the author - ity as port state. As a flag state, it is the Mari - time Casualty Investigations Department of the PMA which co-ordinates casualty investigations
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