The Daily View: Now you can swipe left on suspect charterers

ON TINDER, Bumble and other dating apps, you’re perfectly entitled to swipe left if you don’t like the look of a potential match. Or so younger colleagues tell me, anyway.

Until a couple of months ago, shipowners weren’t always so lucky.

On the one hand, they were expected to comply with ever more stringent sanctions rules. On the other, they could be sued by counterparties for pulling out of contracts with entities they believed to be sanctioned if they could not 100% prove this to be the case.

That has now changed, after Lord Justice Foxton’s decision last May in Tonzip Maritime v 2Rivers — informally known as the Catalan Sea case after the vessel involved — established they do not need nailed-on proof.

The Court of Appeal has effectively confirmed that decisions on sanctions matters can be objectively reasonable even when made on the basis of incomplete information.

The case, which includes a sanctioned Russian businessman and plenty of twists and turns, has wide-ranging implications. It has drawn attention from owners, charterers, marine underwriters and shipping lawyers, whose reactions I have gathered on the Lloyd’s List website.

However, you still can’t just wiggle out of a contract for no good reason. But if there are genuine red flags — as I believe dating app terminology has it — you are good to say no.

David Osler
Law and insurance editor, Lloyd’s List