Fuel supplier Radcliff/Economy Marine Services has turned to a US federal appeals court over a judge’s decision that it does not have a lien against a Technip ship in the battle over OW Bunker’s collapse.

The Alabama company’s lawyer, Maples & Fontenot’s Gilbert Fontenot, today lodged an official notice of the challenge with the Atlanta-headquartered US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The appeal comes three days after Magistrate Judge William Cassady denied a request for a new trial in the fight involving OW’s largest secured creditor, ING Bank, which the judge had said did hold a lien on Technip’s 33,800-gt Deep Blue (built 2001).

Radcliffe secured an arrest order against the ship, a pipelay vessel onwned by the French offshore construction giant, in December 2014 over $700,000 in fuel purchased through Denmark’s OW as a middle man just days before it collapsed into liquidation that November.

But like many US judges, Cassady ruled that the physical supplier did not have a lien over the ship because it did not deliver the fuel “on the order” of the shipowner or its agent.

Earlier this week, Cassady rejected Fontenot’s arguments that OW acted as an agent for Technip by serving as a bunker broker. Rather, Technip signed a contract with OW, and Radcliffe was a subcontractor.

“The trial record is clear that Technip at no time authorised its contractual counterparty, OW Bunkers UK, to bind the Deep Blue or Technip itself,” the judge said.