Overview
As international trade routes expand and regional transport corridors integrate, the shipping and logistics sector serves as the absolute backbone of regional commerce. However, managing overland logistics and maritime supply chains carries inherent legal risks, ranging from deep-sea cargo losses to complex port delays and cross-border customs seizures.
Legal practice in this arena demands a specialized mastery of international conventions, admiralty court procedures, and multi-modal transport laws. Resolving these high-value commercial frictions requires swift action—such as executing ship arrests or securing emergency maritime injunctions—to minimize demurrage costs and insulate supply chains from catastrophic disruption.
- Admiralty Litigation: High-value, specialized maritime legal claims adjudicated before the Admiralty Court, involving ship arrests, vessel collisions, salvage rights, towage disputes, and maritime liens.
- Cargo Claims: Legal disputes and liability actions surrounding the damage, theft, contamination, or commercial delay of high-value goods while in transit across international waters or overland freight corridors.
- Logistics Disputes: Contractual and operational friction breaking out among warehouse operators, freight forwarders, third-party logistics (3PL) providers, and international manufacturers over supply chain failures or lien exercises.
- Marine Insurance: Complex coverage disputes, hull and machinery claims, and subrogation actions fought between cargo owners, shipping lines, and international insurance underwriters.
Select Experience
Our Shipping & Logistics practice is built for high-stakes disputes in a sector where technical complexity and commercial pressure meet. We represent shipowners, operators, cargo interests, logistics providers, and financiers in sophisticated maritime and supply chain litigation and arbitration, cutting through complex regulatory and multijurisdictional issues to deliver focused, commercially focused strategies. From charterparty conflicts and cargo contamination to vessel arrests, marine casualties, sanctions exposure, and supply chain disruption, we respond decisively and strategically, and stabilise crises when operations stall or cross-border claims escalate, driving every matter toward a decisive, commercially grounded result.
- Acting for a defendant in complex in personam admiralty proceedings involving allegations of fraudulent transfer of ownership of two fishing vessels, unlawful chartering, and negligent operation, said to have reduced the vessels’ value. The matter raises significant issues concerning the application of English admiralty principles, the legal impact of alleged fraudulent ownership transfers, and the potential liability of agents acting for disclosed charterers in fraud-linked vessel transactions.
- Acting for a South African marine underwriter in the recovery of its outlay against a leading global shipping line, arising from cargo damage caused by the delayed delivery of highly perishable goods shipped from the Port of Mombasa to the Port of Durban.
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