The Admiralty Newsletter - 27 January 2026
Expert analyses of maritime law, regulatory developments, and landmark cases delivered to your inbox every week.
Welcome to The Admiralty Newsletter.
This week’s edition includes precedent-setting court rulings on insurance, charterparty and jurisdictional disputes; developments in sanctions, decarbonisation and container safety.
There’s also practical operational guidance from passage planning to preserving evidence after a casualty; and commentary on arbitration, limitation regimes, and Letters of Indemnity.
Finally, we have an OpEd on the FOSFA Arbitration Rules by Vedanta Vishwakarma, as well as a list of senior industry appointments.
-Admiralty News
Index
Case Law
Insurance
“The case raises important points about the nature of the loss insured under this MII policy wording, and the meaning of the proviso in the insuring clause that the insured peril “occurs or exists without the privity of the Assured”.” - Forgery, privity and fortuity: Commercial Court decides novel mortgagee’s interest insurance claim (7KBW)
“The implications of this decision are significant for any insurance policy that contains a ‘pay to be paid’ provision. Owners in this instance utilised a number of arguments in order to defeat the provision, but none were accepted by the Court of Appeal, reinforcing their strength and applicability under English law.” - MS Amlin Marine NV v King Trader Ltd [2025] EWCA Civ 1387: Paid, or not to be paid – that is the question for the onerous clause doctrine (DWF Group)
Remedies
“When considering the above question [in King Crude Carriers] one view taken is that, given the rising market, Sellers’ damages would be nil if their loss is calculated as the difference between the contract price and the market value of the vessel at the date of breach. That is the usual “market measure” starting point for damages on non-acceptance of a ship. However, in the original arbitration, Sellers argued for a different measure of damages (in addition to their debt claim): that they should be put in the same position as if Buyers had performed their contractual obligation to provide the KYC documents. If Buyers had done that, the deposit would have accrued as a debt. Hence, Sellers should be able to sue for an amount equal to the deposit as damages. That was the outcome of a 1984 Court of Appeal case on an earlier version of the Saleform (The Blankenstein).” - New judgments on Norwegian Saleform (ERG Legal)
“The Court of Appeal’s judgment in this case does not undermine the compensatory principle; rather, it clarifies how that principle operates in practice. Damages are assessed by reference to contractual rights and market conditions, not by scrutinising collateral dealings. As Lord Justice Males noted, English law does not always provide an exact indemnity, but it does strive for rules that are “easily and definitely found”.” - Skyros Maritime Corporation & Agios Minas Shipping Co v Hapag-Lloyd AG (MECO Group)
Sanctions
“In this case, sanctions were the initiating factor of a dispute regarding who had the right to appoint and remove a Trustee under loan participation notes (Loan Notes). However, the need to do so only arose because the original Trustee decided it could no longer act due to EU sanctions in relation to Russia. The dispute is, therefore, of wider relevance as it highlights the way in which international sanctions continue to impact the performance of otherwise legitimate contractual obligations and the approach that the English Court takes in such cases – within the specific context of financing documentation.” - Loan provisions and the impact of sanctions (Hill Dickinson)
Due Diligence
“The HAPPY ARAS is also a good example of the importance of an owner being able to prove due diligence with reliable evidence. The evidentiary burden lays with the owner, and certificates of competencies alone will not suffice. The English courts have made it clear owners need to go further to prove that they discharged their due diligence obligations.” - HAPPY ARAS: General Average recovery fails for want of due diligence (Hill Dickinson)
“The Judge set out the English law tests for establishing unseaworthiness by reference to crew incompetence, and what steps an owner may be expected to take to show it has satisfied its due diligence requirements. In this case, reliance on a master’s certificates and references alone was not enough. The Judge referred to case law detailing proper processes for appraisal, audits and evaluations of masters, which should be routinely conducted and recorded.” - Can incompetent crew render a vessel unseaworthy? (NorthStandard)
“The case of MV “CMA CGM LIBRA” shows that execution failures can have consequences as serious as planning problems. In past grounding incidents, even when the passage plan itself was good, failures in execution and supervision were seen as problems in bridge team management, leading to an ISM failure. These issues ultimately led the court to find the vessel unseaworthy. This highlights an important point: a plan that isn’t followed can be just as bad as a poorly made plan.” - Passage plan best practice – organisation (Skuld)
“An English Admiralty Court judgment on a collision case is noteworthy and to be accorded due weight, particularly in common law jurisdictions. However, while the Kiveli judgment aimed to bring clarity to seafarers, in practice the tangible impact may be limited.” - Collisions – do Admiralty Court decisions assist mariners? (Hill Dickinson)
“These decisions - in 2023 and again in 2025 - collectively underscore the robustly pro‑arbitration attitude of the Hong Kong courts. Hong Kong courts are willing to issue and maintain anti‑suit injunctions to protect the integrity of Hong Kong‑seated arbitrations, even amid intense cross‑border and sanctions‑related pressure. The latest judgment in 2025 further re-affirms the strictness of compliance obligations and that Hong Kong courts will not tolerate tactics aimed at undermining arbitration through foreign proceedings.” - Hong Kong Court maintains anti-suit injunction restraining foreign court proceedings that violate the contractual arbitration agreement (UK Defence Club)
Tort
“Even though the tort of conversion can hold liable parties that had acted inconsistently to the rights of a claimant with exclusive possession of the goods (albeit without a positive intention to challenge the claimant’s rights), this case makes clear that the claimant has to show a causative link between the acts of the parties and the claimant’s loss in order to establish liability.” - Does an instruction to issue delivery orders constitute conversion? (Stephenson Harwood)
Undisclosed Principals
“The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that liability of an undisclosed principal requires actual authority, not ostensible authority or mere economic interest. The Exporters were not parties to the LOIs, and the English court lacked jurisdiction over them.” - Know Your LOI Counterparty: Lessons from the Court of Appeal (Steamship)
Implied Terms
“This judgment reaffirms that a term will only be implied where it is strictly necessary to make a contract work, and not to render an agreement reasonable, fair, or commercially desirable. As contractual certainty remains a cornerstone of English commercial law, courts will only imply terms in exceptional circumstances and will not do so simply to rebalance risk or mitigate an unfavourable outcome. Therefore, where parties have expressly allocated risk, that allocation will be enforced as written.” - The Maltese Falcon: Commercial Court reaffirms that where a contract expressly allocates risk, implied terms will not remedy the outcome (UK Defence Club)
Disclosure
“Furthermore, this judgment confirms that merely because parties have concluded an agreement to the effect that, as between them, documents are to be regarded as confidential, this will not be a bar to a [South African] Court ordering the disclosure of such documents on the basis that they are not privileged.” - Legal Privilege vs Confidentiality (Cox Yeats)
Regulation
Decarbonisation
“As FuelEU introduces new concepts and practices for the shipping industry, and the industry has not yet experienced even one full compliance cycle, there is a lack of settled norms and mechanisms for parties to adopt or fine tune. Neither are there established customs which a Court or Tribunal could look to when interpreting a time charterparty, and seeking to ascertain what the parties intended, should disputes in connection with pooling and compensation later arise.
In an era of creativity and experimentation, while the industry works out how to respond to the opportunities and risks presented by FuelEU, the importance of the express terms of the time charterparty is elevated.” - Maritime Decarbonisation: Five questions for 2025 gift wrapped - owners and charterers (Stephenson Harwood)
“For ships sailing to, from or within the EU, biofuels that do not meet the sustainability criteria set out in RED III and the additional sustainability criteria of FuelEU (which pertain to particular feedstocks) will not be awarded the lower emission factor attributed to fully compliant biofuels, and may even be awarded the emissions factor of the least favourable fossil fuel comparator.” - Maritime Decarbonisation: Five questions for 2025 gift wrapped - banks and financiers (Stephenson Harwood)
“It’s fair to say that a laser focus on risk allocation becomes more and more important because there is an increasing number of risks playing out, and to have a proper view on regulation on the allocation between owners and charters is becoming more and more important,” said Thommessen’s Henrik Hagberg. “And then, given the state of affairs and the shifting environment we have, it is very recommendable to add in some sort of flexibility in the charters.” - Shipping facing ‘complete mess’ without IMO Net-Zero Framework (TradeWinds)
“The Amended CBAM Regulation introduces a more proportionate penalty regime, (i) allowing for reduced penalties if errors are caused by third-party data, which recognises the complexities of international supply chains, but also (ii) imposing penalties for importers who exceed the exemption threshold without proper authorisation (but releases them from further declaration obligations upon payment).” - Operationalisation and simplification of the EU CBAM: Starting the year with a CBAM (HSF Kramer)
Sanctions
“The new Italian regime also means penalties apply to anyone who fails to provide the authorities with information relating to funds or economic resources belonging to or attributable to designated persons, entities, bodies or groups. Jail terms could be increased by up to one-third where “aggravating circumstances” are involved, said CJC’s Enrico Vergani, Marco Mastropasqua and Giulia Morelli.” - Lawyers warn over Italian jail sentences as new sanctions regime begins (TradeWinds)
“The EU FAQs include a recommendation that operators insert a contractual clause with their supplier in the purchase contract of imported products, containing a guarantee (e.g. requesting an attestation of assurance) of non-Russian crude oil origin, to try to give contractual protection if it is subsequently established that Russian crude oil was used for refining of the imported petroleum products. Any such clause would need to be agreed at the latest at the time of the import, purchase or transfer of the relevant petroleum products.” - Sanctions against Russia: Entry into Force of the EU Ban on Petroleum Products Derived from Russian Origin Crude Oil (UK Defence Club)
Flag States
“Open registries have historically been accused of laxity in vetting shipowners seeking to use their services. Whatever the shortcomings previously, Bill Gallagher insists that it very much no longer standard practice. “Registries now have more personal relationships. When we started this thing out, we didn’t know the guys on the other side of the table from Adam. Now our general counsel Meredith Kirby is regularly on the phone with Liberia on these issues. You start by having a framework and you can build from that.” - Crack down on ‘Mickey Mouse flag states’, Marshall Islands urges (Lloyd’s List)
SOLAS & MARPOL
“It is important to note that, notwithstanding the increased responsibility falling on third parties, the shipowner and operator will remain the primary, if not the sole, target for loss recovery in the first instance. This includes claims regarding wreck removal, pollution clean-up, and third-party damage.” - Container losses; the 2026 SOLAS and MARPOL amendments (Hill Dickinson)
Trade Remedies
“At the close of the year, the FMC’s flag-of-convenience investigation remains open and unresolved, potentially representing a longer-term challenge to established international maritime practices. The USTR fees also remain in regulatory limbo, suspended but not eliminated, with the prospect of resumption, possibly at escalated levels, hanging over the industry as bilateral negotiations proceed.” - Storm Tossed Shipping Policy (Chalos Law)
“When a vessel is permitted under the charter party to trade to the US, shipowners and charterers should consider incorporating clauses that clearly allocate responsibility for AMS and AES compliance in light of the lack of clarity.” - Uncertainty over who constitutes ‘carrier’ under US import/export rules, Gard warns (Lloyd’s List)
Resource Governance
“Legal and governance concerns also persist. Internationally, debate continues over the appropriate role and authority of the ISA under UNCLOS. NOAA’s exercise of authority under DSHMRA—a domestic statute enacted prior to the creation of the ISA—has drawn scrutiny from stakeholders who question how U.S. licensing decisions align with evolving international norms and expectations.” - Critical Minerals at a Critical Point: NOAA’s Decision Point (Perkins Coie)
Limitation of Liability
“The Limitation Act in the United States is somewhat unique as compared to limitation provisions in other countries, namely with respect to how the fund is calculated, who is entitled to limit, and what a claimant must prove to break an owner’s right to limitation. There are many factors to consider in deciding whether and when to assert the right to limit, be it in an affirmative action or as a defense. That said, the possibility of potential limitation of or exoneration from liability after a casualty event is generally one worth pursuing.” - The Limitation Act in the United States: A Deeper Look (Blank Rome)
Guidance
“For charterers, it is critical that the adverse consequences of cargo damage that are indemnified under a rain LOI be restricted to wet damage and, further, such wet damage being freshwater wet damage and not seawater wet damage. Simply stating ‘cargo damage’ in a rain LOI wording without further specifying ‘wet damage’ may expose charterers to shipowner’s indemnity claims for cargo damage which have nothing to do with precipitation.” - Rain letters of indemnity – guidance for shipowners and charterers (Penningtons)
“Property and maritime insurance may seem miles or even oceans apart, but both are ultimately anchored in the same truth. The measure of an insurer’s duty is reasonableness, not perfection. Whether you operate on land or at sea, recognizing which framework you are in, and why it operates as it does, is what allows you to navigate it effectively.” - From Dock to Doorstep: Exploring Good and Bad Faith Across Land and Sea (Cozen O’Connor)
“A recent incident involving a handymax bulk carrier at an exposed anchorage illustrates the consequences of inadequate anchor watchkeeping. Strengthening winds and moderate traffic were not appropriately factored into the vessel’s watch arrangements. The failure to conduct regular position checks, combined with overreliance on electronic alarms—some of which had been silenced earlier due to false alerts—resulted in the vessel dragging anchor unnoticed. The subsequent collision with a neighbouring tanker led to hull damage, operational delays, and pollution-control requirements, generating substantial financial expenditure and P&I liabilities.” - Maintaining an effective bridge watch while at anchor (Skuld)
“[I]t is generally considered best practice in the United States for the crew not to draft written statements, which may be considered as recounting facts and thus would be discoverable. Such written statements are often incomplete and inaccurate as the crew may not be aware of what is important or relevant. Further, it is prudent to limit distribution and avoid broad internal circulation of sensitive communications. Vessel interests and counsel should also consider separating any legal analysis from operational updates in the same document or e-mail chain in order to best protect attorney-client privilege.” - The Casualty Occurred, Now What? Preserve the Evidence! (Blank Rome)
Appointments
Commenting on these appointments, Head of Chambers, Poonam Melwani KC says:“We are thrilled to celebrate the success of Caroline Pounds and Gemma Morgan on their appointment as King’s Counsel. Both are outstanding advocates and role models, and we are delighted to see their excellence recognised. A fantastic achievement, and one that will encourage and inspire other women at the Bar.” - Caroline Pounds & Gemma Morgan to be appointed King’s Counsel in 2026 (Quadrant Chambers)
Ishfaq Ahmed (Head of 36 Stone) comments: “On behalf of 36 Stone, I warmly congratulate Ravi Aswani on his appointment as King’s Counsel. This is a thoroughly deserved recognition of his outstanding advocacy, ability, and contribution to the profession. We are all immensely proud of his achievement.” - Ravi Aswani to be appointed as King’s Counsel (36 Stone)
OpEd
Author: Vedanta Vishwakarma
FOSFA Arbitration Rules 2025: Key Procedural Changes and their Commercial Implications
Introduction and Background
The Federation of Oils, Seeds and Fats Associations (“FOSFA”) is a London based international trade association focused on the global trade of oils, oilseeds and fats. Established in 1971, FOSFA provides standardized contracts, arbitration services, and guidelines to ensure fair and efficient trading practices among its members, which include producers, traders, brokers, and shipping companies.
FOSFA’s key contribution lies in its standardized international contracts, widely used in the industry for trading commodities like soybeans, sunflower oil, palm oil, rapeseed, and related products. These contracts define terms for delivery, quality, shipping, and dispute resolution, providing legal clarity and reducing transaction risks.
The organization also offers arbitration services to resolve commercial disputes quickly and cost-effectively, as an alternative to litigation. Its arbitration awards are enforceable globally, making it a trusted authority in international trade.
Effective from 1 April 2025, FOSFA has implemented notable revisions to its Arbitration and Appeal Rules. These amendments introduce clearer procedural standards and reflect a stronger alignment with established English arbitration principles. In this article, I outline the principal differences from the 2024 Rules and explain why they are significant for stakeholders across the agri-commodities trade.
1. Jurisdictional Decisions: No Internal Appeals Permitted
2024 Position:
The prior rules recognised that arbitrators had the authority to rule on their own jurisdiction but offered limited guidance on how such issues would be handled, and whether parties could contest such rulings within the FOSFA framework.
2025 Update:
The revised Rule 5 clarifies that arbitrators now have two procedural avenues when jurisdictional challenges arise: they may (i) issue a standalone jurisdictional decision, or (ii) address jurisdiction within their final award. Crucially, any jurisdictional ruling—whether preliminary or final—is not open to appeal within the FOSFA system. This formalises a position that was previously uncertain, closing a significant procedural gap.
Commercial Implication:
This change restricts parties from using jurisdictional challenges as a tactical delay mechanism. It promotes procedural certainty and efficiency at the cost of flexibility in contesting tribunal competence within the FOSFA framework.
2. Award Payment Procedures: Structured Timeline Introduced
2024 Position:
Previously, both parties bore joint responsibility for the payment of arbitration fees following the issuance of an award. While parties were required to settle costs within 42 days of notification that the award was ready, the rules did not stipulate who should pay first. Although it was clear from the previous rules that if the said payment is not made in 42 days, the right to appeal would be lost.
2025 Update:
The new rules introduce a sequenced payment structure. Initially, the claimant is given 21 days to pay the applicable fees. Should the claimant default, the respondent is offered a 7-day window. If neither party pays within a total of 28 days, FOSFA may list the defaulting party and notify its members under Rule 11(c). This framework also applies to FOSFA appeal awards.
Commercial Implication:
This amendment introduces accountability and transparency into the cost recovery process. It incentivises prompt payment and provides reputational consequences for non-compliance, reinforcing the importance of timely financial follow-through.
3. Appeals: New Trigger Date for Limitation Period
2024 Position:
The time limit for lodging an appeal previously commenced from the date the award was dispatched to the parties. FOSFA would date the award once it was prepared and notify the parties after fees were settled.
2025 Update:
Rule 6(b) now stipulates that the award will be dated only after full payment of arbitration costs by both parties. Rule 7(a) further provides that the 28-day appeal period begins from the award’s date—not from its dispatch. This change aligns with section 70(3) of the Arbitration Act 1996, which was affirmed in the High Court’s decision in Eronat v CPNC International (Chad) Ltd [2024] EWHC 2880 (Comm).
Commercial Implication:
This seemingly technical clarification is operationally important. Parties must monitor the date on the award document itself rather than relying on receipt or notification. Delayed receipt will no longer extend appeal deadlines, underscoring the need for meticulous timeline management.
4. Participation of Legal Representatives: Expanded Discretion
2024 Position:
Legal counsel were not permitted to appear in first-instance FOSFA hearings, except on appeal and only where the arbitrators deemed the matter particularly important.
2025 Update:
Under the revised rules, parties may now present their cases orally, in writing, or both at first instance. Legal representation is now permissible at this stage—but only in significant matters and subject to the arbitrators’ discretion.
Commercial Implication:
This rule change affords greater flexibility for parties to seek legal advocacy in complex or high-stakes disputes. While still restrained by arbitrator oversight, it marks a move toward more formal proceedings in certain cases.
5. FOSFA’s Exclusive Jurisdiction: Now Expressly Stated
2024 Position:
The prior version required arbitration in London but did not state that FOSFA held exclusive administrative authority over such proceedings.
2025 Update:
The revised rules now affirm that FOSFA is the sole institution authorised to administer arbitrations conducted under its rules.
Commercial Implication:
This removes ambiguity and confirms FOSFA as the exclusive forum for dispute resolution under its standard contracts. This provides clarity and prevents parallel proceedings or jurisdictional forum shopping.
Conclusion
The 2025 amendments to the FOSFA Arbitration and Appeal Rules signal a move toward enhanced procedural rigour and predictability, offering greater alignment with English arbitration norms. While these changes introduce tighter controls and more explicit obligations, they ultimately serve to strengthen confidence in FOSFA’s dispute resolution framework.
For agri-commodity traders and industry participants, the practical implications are clear: monitor deadlines diligently, budget for prompt cost payments, and plan dispute strategies with a full understanding of the reduced procedural flexibility.