In the spring of 2006, a train carrying a range of manufactured good from East Asia, including tractors, automotive parts, and copy machines, derailed outside of Dallas, Texas. Much of the cargo was destroyed. Assigning liability in the wake of the derailment required untangling the web of intermodal carriage contracts governing the damaged shipments. Two […]

United States v. Transocean Deepwater Drilling, Inc., came in the aftermath of one of the watershed maritime events of this quarter century. On April 20, 2010, Transocean’s DEEPWATER HORIZON, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), was drilling the Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico when a blowout, explosion, and fire occurred. Eleven people […]

Bulk carrier and panama operator D’Amico Dry Limited brought suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York to enforce an English court’s judgment awarding D’Amico over $1.7 million on a contract claim against Primera Maritime (Hellas) Limited. Primera had failed to pay on a freight forwarding agreement (FFA) between […]

William Kealoha’s life changed forever when he fell twenty-five to fifty feet from a barge onto a dry dock, the first of several tragic events over a two-year crescendo that would ultimately leave Kealoha mentally and physically crippled. Kealoha’s fall occurred while employed as a ship laborer fro Leeward Marine Inc. (Leeward) and resulted in […]

Hurricane Ike swept through the Gulf of Mexico in September 2008, leaving behind more than $150 million in damage to more than 150 offshore platforms in which W&T Offshore (W&T) had a commercial interest. In preparation for just such a storm, W&T purchased three types of insurance: (1) a commercial general liability policy (the “primary […]

During the formation of marine insurance contracts in China, a broker acting as an intermediary between assured and insurer plays an important role. This Article will focus mainly on legal issues about the legal statutes, duties, and rights of brokers. Due to the profound impacts brought by marine insurance law in the United Kingdom and […]

More than 10,000 people have died in West Africa following the current outbreak of Ebola, which began in March 2014. Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria are the worst-affected countries. Although until now no port on the West African coast was closed, local authorities have started to restrict entrance of vessels that previously called on […]

The aim of this Article is to present recent developments in European Union (EU) agency law concerning the applicability and mandatory scope of the Directive on the Coordination of the Laws of the Member States Relating to Self-Employed Commercial Agents (Directive). The Directive is of interest for several reasons. It represents one of the few […]

It is a very common practice in the international shipping market to negotiate and to conclude charterparties via brokers. Therefore, a commission clause is usually contained in the charterparty. In cases where a party delays or refuses to perform its contractual responsibility to remit the commission and where the charterparty does not contain a broker […]

This Article provides an overview of some of the most significant cases concerning charterparties and carriage of goods by sea decided in the United Kingdom during 2014. There is a concise discussion of selected cases with references in the footnotes to additional cases decided in 2014, which, due to spatial constraints, could not be given […]