Posted on: 6 March 2020
Maritime Disputes Group Watson Farley Williams (WFW) comments on a significant decision, published on March 5 2020, in whcih the English Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court that an inadequate passage plan that caused a vessel’s grounding rendered the vessel unseaworthy. The decision in the CMA CGM Libra, which was given by an experienced maritime bench, emphasised the importance of ensuring that ship passage plans are fit for purpose. Permission to appeal to the Supreme Court has been sought, although it remains to be seen whether this will be granted.
Facts
CMA CGM LIBRA, a 6000 TEU container vessel, had part-loaded a cargo in Xiamen. On departure, in what most would have considered an error in navigation, the vessel ran aground and required assistance to be refloated. General Average (GA) was declared, and GA security was collected. A substantial proportion of cargo interests had settled their contribution, but a number of others set out to establish a York-Antwerp Rule D defence that the vessel was not seaworthy at or before the commencement of the voyage.
It was discovered that an appropriate preliminary notice to mariners had not been applied to the working chart, no annotations had been made indicating the danger and the danger had not been properly accounted for in the passage plan.
High Court decision
As a result, at first instance Mr Justice Teare held that there was a defect in the vessel that should have been rectified before departure and that rendered the vessel unseaworthy. He held that the cargo interests were therefore not liable to pay their contribution in GA. Our article on this decision can be found here.
Court of Appeal Decision
The owners appealed on two grounds:
The judge had incorrectly held that a one-off defect in a passage plan rendered the vessel unseaworthy for the purposes of Article III Rule 1 of the Hague Rules and, in particular, had failed to properly distinguish between matters of navigation and aspects of seaworthiness; and
The judge had wrongly held that the actions of the vessel’s master and crew had been carried out in their capacity as navigators and not as carrier and could not, therefore, be treated as attempted performance by the carrier to exercise due diligence to make the vessel seaworthy.
The Court dismissed both grounds.
Follow this link to read the full article.
