The final chapter in a long-running legal dispute involving three prominent Island businessmen came to a close last week when the State Appeals Court upheld a Dukes County Superior Court decision that Energi Inc., insurer for R.M. Packer Co., must pay $66,409.50 in legal fees to Edgartown law firm McCarron, Murphy & Vukota, which represented Dockside Marina and owner Terry McCarthy in the wake of a diesel fuel spill in Oak Bluffs Harbor in July 2007.

In its five-page Nov. 25 decision, written by Judge Gabrielle Wolohojian, the Appeals Court concurred with the 2013 Superior Court decision by Judge Gary A. Nickerson, who after an eight-day bench trial, found Energi attorneys had “no reasonable basis to assert that [Harborside] was liable.”

“Dockside did nothing wrong,” he wrote. “No facts support a claim of negligence as to Dockside.”

Energi attorneys contended that their legal fees should be reimbursed because Dockside was partially responsible for the 800-gallon spill because it had been issued a “notice of responsibility” from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in the wake of the mishap. However, the notice stated that Dockside was only “potentially responsible” for the spill. Both Judge Nickerson and the Appeals Court concurred Dockside was not legally responsible. “The judge found that Dockside did not own or control the tanks or the land in which they sat. Nor did it have any duty to maintain the tanks,” Judge Wolohojian wrote. “The judge found that Dockside had no role in the day-to-day operation of the site.”

Both rulings acknowledged the waters were muddied because “Dockside had a longstanding arrangement (starting with Packer, and continued with Marmik) whereby it pumped fuel from the tanks for sale to its customers,” Judge Wolohojian wrote. Marmik LLC, owned by Mark and Michael Wallace, bought the tanks from R.M. Packer in 2000. The spill set off a blizzard of suits and countersuits between attorneys for Packer, Marmik, and Dockside. Judge Nickerson wrote in his 2013 decision, “Claims, counterclaims and cross-claims have formed a legal thicket.”

Speaking with The Times on Wednesday, Ralph Packer, owner of R.M. Packer, said he was unaware of the court’s decision. “It was nothing that we initiated or brought forward,” he said. “The case is over. The insurance company reserves the right to try to recoup legal fees, and that’s what they did.”

The mishap occurred when a Packer employee overfilled an underground gas storage tank — one that he had filled the previous day — resulting in a geyser that saturated several harborside businesses, including ones owned by Mr. Wallace and Mr. McCarthy, and also spilled a significant amount of diesel fuel into Oak Bluffs Harbor.