Lloyd's Shipping & Trade Law

Don’t wait and see... This was a case where proceedings were commenced against the claimant in China, and the claimant preferred to wait and see before engaging the English court's jurisdiction for an anti-suit injunction against those proceedings in support of arbitration proceedings.

PST Energy 7 Shipping LLC and Another v OW Bunker Malta Ltd and Another (The “Res Cogitans”) [2015] EWCA Civ 1058 is only one of the many cases flowing from the restructuring proceedings of OW Bunkers in Denmark, and perhaps the one destined for greatest influence upon English law. The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of the shipowner, holding that OW Bunker (OWBM) was entitled to payment for the bunkers that had been supplied, notwithstanding that OWBM was never in a position to transfer title to the bunkers to the owners.

Admiralty law is not the discipline that usually yields most case law, but in the last six months there has been an unusually plentiful and interesting crop of cases from overseas as well as, perhaps surprisingly, English courts. What follows is a brief review of the majority of cases – many of them have been or will be discussed in more depth in Shipping & Trade Law.