Admiralty & Shipping

In this practice area

Admiralty and Shipping collects the judgments arising from maritime disputes — the arrest of vessels, carriage of goods by sea, charterparties, and the statutory powers over shipping. Though the smallest fully-fledged area of the corpus and concentrated in the High Court, it addresses the specialised admiralty jurisdiction and the maritime law that governs it.

The arrest of a vessel is a central subject. Judgments examine the setting aside of a warrant of arrest, whether a bareboat charterparty has been terminated, and whether the plaintiff has a right to possession of the vessel — the questions that determine whether an arrest may stand. The collection also includes judicial review of a detention order made against a vessel under the Merchant Shipping Ordinance 1952 and the amenability of the exercise of such investigative powers to review.

Carriage and charter form a distinct strand. Judgments consider a claim by the consignee of cargo damaged during a voyage and whether the carrier breached its obligations, a claim for charter rental of barges and tug boats and whether separate contracts were entered into, and relief against forfeiture where a party seeks to forfeit fully-paid cargo over a minor outstanding balance. Negligence causing damage to port infrastructure, and the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, appear where a vessel damages a terminal's link bridge. A judgment in Bahasa Malaysia addresses undang-undang maritim (maritime law) and innocent passage under Article 19 of UNCLOS.

The cases sit in the High Court exercising its admiralty jurisdiction. As a whole the area shows how the Malaysian courts apply the specialised maritime law — regulating the arrest and release of vessels, allocating responsibility for cargo and charter disputes, and reviewing the statutory powers exercised over shipping — within the distinct procedural framework that admiralty practice requires. The concentration of the recent cases in a short span reflects the specialised nature of the jurisdiction and the limited pool of maritime disputes that reach the courts.