A leading shipping and transport lawyer with Hull firm Andrew Jackson has travelled to Chennai, India, to present a seminar on recent case law.

With over 25 years' international shipping law experience, Dominic Ward, senior partner and head of the shipping and transport department, and a regular visitor to India, presented his seminar to a 50-strong audience made up of members of the Madras (Chennai) branch of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers and students of AMET, a maritime university also based in Chennai.

Dominic spoke to the delegates about three recent cases concerning disputes over the correct interpretation of charter parties brokered by shipbrokers.   "The cases involved the Commercial Court carefully examining the wording of the charter parties to decide whether the owner or charterer bore the risk of liability in question," he explained.

"One issue was whether a large bulk carrier, laden with coal, was to be regarded as still on hire to the charterers during the period it was captured by pirates near Somalia.  In another case the court decided that a ship-owner could not reclaim the cost of storing a cargo of steel which had been held pending the provision of financial security by the charterer; the storage costs were in excess of US $840,000.

" The delegates were interested to see the approach taken by the English courts on interpreting charter parties, " added Dominic, who has been asked to present a further seminar when he returns to Chennai.