Official blog of Swansea University's IISTL, where we keep you up to date with the latest maritime and commercial legal news.
Direct actions against liability insurers. Port of Assens v Navigators Management (UK) Ltd – the sequel.
Following the Court of Justice’s interpretation of art. 13(5) of the Brussels I Regulation, reported in this blog on July 13 2017, the matter came back before the Danish Supreme Court. The CJEU had found that an agreement on jurisdiction in an agreement between an insurer and a policyholder is not binding on an injured party who wishes to bring an action directly against the insurer before its home court or before the courts for the place where the harmful event occurred. On 9 October 2017 the Danish Supreme Court found that the CJEU judgment did not contain any reservations to the effect that, for this to apply, the injured party must be regarded as an economically or legally weaker party in this particular case.
Accordingly, under the Brussels I Regulation the Port of Assens would be entitled to bring an action before the Danish courts, if it was permitted to bring an action directly against the insurance company under the national rules applicable to the case. The claim was most closely linked to Denmark so this issue was to be settled under Danish law. Section 95(2) of the Danish Insurance Contracts Act thus applied and the Port of Assens was correct in bringing the action in Denmark. The Supreme Court remitted the case to be heard on its merits before the Maritime and Commercial Court.
Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.
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