“Bumi Armada granted Tozzi a right of first refusal for certain works in a floating gas production and storage facility construction project; having awarded those works elsewhere, Bumi Armada said that the right was not binding as the minutes of meeting recording it (drawn up by Bumi Armada but signed by both parties) were expressed to be "subject to ...contract". The Court of Appeal found that the first refusal agreement had been concluded orally at the meeting and that on the facts, the minutes had no contractual effect and their "subject to contract" proviso was ineffective.”

“H, the guarantor of a long-term time charter, faced a USD68.Sm claim from S after charterers failed to perform. H argued that both charter and guarantee were unenforceable, being procured by bribery, evidenced by individuals' confessions. S said the confessions resulted from torture. All relevant parties and events were in the PRC. The 1st instance Judge found no bribery and that neither the confession nor torture evidence was reliable. The CA ruled that the Judge should first have decided upon the torture, so his finding on bribery was unsound. In the unusual circumstances, the matter was remitted to another 1st instance judge to consider the evidence afresh.”

“The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that "unit" in Article IV rule 5 of the Hague Visby Rules means a physical item and that "enumeration... as packed" means no more than specification in words or figures of the number of packages. Therefore, the first instance judge correctly concluded that the specification on the bills (in this case, waybills) was such that identified individual frozen tuna loins as the relevant units.”

“Although the conduct of a judge in meeting one party's Counsel in private and discussing elements of the case was considered "inept", the Court of Appeal found that on the basis of the relevant facts a fair-minded observer would not conclude that the judge's inappropriate conduct could indicate any possibility that he was biased. No submissions were made privately by the Counsel, all the judge's comments were communicated to the other party and the innocuous nature of the conversation gave rise to no inference that the judge would decide the case other than impartially.”

“The Court of Appeal confirmed that the word "unit" in Article IV Rule 5 of the Hague Rules means a physical item and not a unit of measurement. Therefore, the Hague Rules limitation of liability cannot apply to bulk cargoes (in this case a fish oil cargo) and the carrier could not limit its liability to the (uncontested) amount of £100 per ton. Nor was the carrier assisted by a charterparty term conferring on it "the like privileges and rights and immunities" as Article IV. Without more, this only conferred the same rights as the carrier would have had under Article IV and no more.”

“Following an engine room fire in August 2012, it was not until February 2013 that ship-owners sought to abandon their vessel to Underwriters and claim a CTL. The Court of Appeal confirmed the High Court ruling that despite the delay, the owners had not lost the right to abandon or declare a CTL. Widely divergent repair estimates had been in play and it was legitimate to include in the repair figures costs incurred between incident and Notice of Abandonment and SCOPIC remuneration.”