UK telco Virgin Media Wholesale is suing the owners of a fishing trawler that allegedly damaged a subsea cable between Ireland and Britain on 26 January 2015.

First reported by Breaking News Ireland, the telco has filed a €800,000 ($870,000) lawsuit at the Irish High Court against “the owners and all persons claiming an interest” in the MV The Lida Suzanna trawler.

Laid in 1999, the 219km Sirius South cable lies between Dublin, Ireland, and Lytham St. Anne’s near Blackpool in England. The vessel, involved in scallop fishing, allegedly dredged the seabed with heavy-duty metal frame nets and damaged the fiber optic cable.

Opening the case on behalf of Virgin on May 4, Edward Farrelly SC said the defendants should have been or ought to have been aware of the cable’s location, which is marked on industry-recognized charts and Ireland’s Marine Atlas.

Existing shipping regulations place a statutory duty on the vessel to carry documents alerting the crew to the location of the cable, said counsel.

The lawyers representing the trawler’s owners argued there is no proof that the vessel was to blame for the damage, said the Irish Independent. The lawyers added that any damage was Virgin’s fault for not properly burying or protecting the cable.

Virgin owns two cables between Ireland and the UK; Sirius South and the Sirius North. The North cable runs between Scotland and Northern Ireland. After the incident with Sirius South, Virgin switched its operations to the other cable, but the damage slowed Internet speeds for its customers.

The cable was repaired by the Orange Marine-owned cable ship Pierre de Fermat in the days after the incident.

The report added that there have been 18 instances of damage to the cable involving trawlers since it was installed in 1999 by Virgin’s predecessor NTL.

According to Fortune, Virgin filed another case against the MV Willie Joe trawler for damage to cables in previous years. However, that case was settled in 2022.