Description

About the Seminar

This reconvened annual short course will focus on judgments handed down in 2021, complementing the short course on Admiralty decisions (by Associate Professor Paul Myburgh) on 23 June 2022. Discussion will centre on two UK Supreme Court judgments: on passage planning and unseaworthiness (The CMA CGM Libra); and on the crossing rules and narrow channels (The Alexandra 1 and Ever Smart). The seminar will also consider appellate level decisions in Singapore and England: on whether bills of lading are documents of title or mere receipts (The Luna); on the nature of liability in demurrage (The Eternal Bliss); on the effect of signing bills of lading in ‘good order and condition’ (The Tai Prize); on whether a company operating machinery was ‘the manager or operator’ of a barge under the LLMC (The Stema Barge II); on the recovery of ransom payments from bill of lading holders (The Polar). Several first instance judgments will also be considered: on the effect of ‘subjects’ in fixture negotiations (The Leonidas); on whether, following the arrest of a vessel, a vessel was off-hire (The Mookda Naree); on whether a shipowner could bring a demurrage claim against a bank and cargo receivers (The Sea Master); on whether an original shipper was liable to an assignee following the switching (and cancellation) of original bills of lading (The Illawarra Fortune). Some of the cases will be considered in detail; others will be highlighted but not discussed in so much detail. Care will be taken to illustrate how the new cases develop, resolve, or raise further questions on the development of the law in this field.

About the Speaker

Professor Stephen Girvin is a tenured full Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, MPA Professor of Maritime Law, and Director of the Centre for Maritime Law (CML). He is the author of Carriage of Goods by Sea 3rd edn (Oxford, 2022), a co-editor (with Professor Vibe Ulfbeck) of Maritime Organisation, Management and Liability: A Legal Analysis of New Challenges in the Maritime Industry (Hart Publishing, 2021), and a co-author of Carver on Charterparties 2nd edn (Sweet & Maxwell, 2021) and Marsden’s Collisions at Sea 14th edn (Sweet & Maxwell, 2016). He is a contributing author of The Rotterdam Rules in the Asia-Pacific Region (Shojihomu, 2014), A New Convention for the Carriage of Goods by Sea: The Rotterdam Rules (Lawtext, 2009), and Liability Regimes in Contemporary Maritime Law (Informa, 2007). Outside maritime law, Stephen has been one of the editors of Palmer’s Company Law (Sweet & Maxwell) for more than two decades.

Stephen is Singapore correspondent for Lloyd’s Maritime & Commercial Law Quarterly, and a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of International Maritime Law (Lawtext) and The Transnational Commercial Law Review (Queen Mary, University of London). He was a contributing member of the editorial committee of the International Maritime and Commercial Law Yearbook (Informa) 2002-2020.

Stephen speaks regularly at international conferences, in recent years in Beijing, Dalian, Hong Kong, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, and Tokyo, and in Aberdeen, Bergen, Copenhagen, Hamburg, London, Oslo, Piraeus, Ravenna, Rotterdam, and Stockholm. He is a member of the Singapore Maritime Law Association and the British Maritime Law Association, a Supporting Member of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association, and an Associate Fellow of the Nautical Institute (AFNI).