A court outside Paris on Friday rejected a claim for compensation filed by survivors and relatives of the victims in the 1994 sinking of the Estonia ferry, the deadliest accident involving a European ship since the Titanic.
The court in Nanterre said that plaintiffs had not proved that the French certification agency and the German shipbuilder were at fault over the ferry disaster.
The Estonia was sailing from Tallinn to Stockholm when it sank in bad weather in the Baltic Sea off Finland in September 1994, killing 852 of the 989 passengers and crew on board.
An international probe concluded in 1997 that the disaster was caused by a problem with the bow-door locking system.
Survivors and relatives were swiftly compensated for material damages from the now-bankrupt Estonian shipowner Estline.
But more than 1,000 survivors and relatives of the deceased battled for two decades for a court in Nanterre to hear the case, which finally opened in April.
The 1,116 plaintiffs were seeking more than 40 million euros (USD 45 million) in damages from French certification agency Bureau Veritas and German shipbuilder Meyer Werft.
The court said in a statement Friday that the plaintiffs were not able to prove "the existence of a gross or intentional fault attributable to the firm Bureau Veritas and/or Meyer Werft."