Regional developments

Regional developments

ACCORDING to a recent press report, Asian shipowners are making increasing use of regional arbitration centres. More and more, they are considering local dispute resolution services, although they are still frequent users of established arbitration centres outside the region.
Excellence in regional arbitration outside the glamour centres is something we should encourage. Ironically, it is the excellence of the established centres, together with the lack of experience locally, which has helped hold back regional development.
Shipping people will continue to use London and New York arbitration for as long as there is a London Bridge in Arizona, but regional centres will grow if they can offer parties to disputes what they are looking for. In this way, the experience and the expertise will grow too. But it won't be easy. Having people speak well of, say, Penang arbitration is one thing. Getting it put in the charter party is quite another.
There is, perhaps, a corollary with the insurance market. Asian owners have been pushing for some time for a local, credible marine insurance market. This initiative, though, has its roots in price dissatisfaction. Asian owners have talked up the prospects of a local hull insurance market in order to wring a few more cents out of the companies and Lloyd's. They have used it as a hammer with which to beat London over the head. But these days London rates are so low that it is a mere toffee hammer that Asia is wielding.
So let Asia, and other parts of the world, grow in arbitration expertise. But let it not be by virtue of cost alone.

Publication rites

YOU read it here second. "There is evident interest amongst the membership of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association that London maritime arbitration awards should receive adequate publicity to enable users to obtain guidance from these when users are involved in London maritime arbitrations."
The words appear in the LMAA summer newsletter, and they are worth repeating. "There is evident interest amongst the membership of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association that London maritime arbitration awards should receive adequate publicity to enable users to obtain guidance from these when users are involved in London maritime arbitrations."
An LMAA subcommittee is looking into this matter, and a questionnaire has been sent to members. Progress is being made, at last. At the moment, a few London awards are published in Lloyd's Maritime Law Newsletter, which is dependent on awards being submitted to it by arbitrators, with the agreement of the parties. The LMAA says it is "grateful to Lloyd's Maritime Law Newsletter for full summaries..." The question is, why? Shouldn't it be the other way round? Now that the LMAA has seen sense, let it do things properly, and publish its awards on a regular basis, for ready money, for the consumption of anybody - including Lloyd's Maritime Law Newsletter - prepared to put up the price of a subscription. Now that would be a real test of public demand.

Lost cause

THE North of England P&I Club has quickly made a name for itself as the loss prevention club. Among other things, it produces a canny newsletter which goes under the name of Signals. In a recent edition the club issued a warning on New York arbitration, pointing to the experience of one of its members who was dissatisfied with an award and with the fact that there seemed to be little chance of getting it overturned in the courts. For good measure, the member was unhappy with the arbitrators' fees.
Nobody likes losing, and the club is free to write whatever it likes in its newsletter. But on the basis of the flimsy facts given it does seem a bit strong to conclude with the comment, "Members should take note accordingly when considering whether or not to agree to include New York arbitration clauses in their charter parties or other contracts". This stops short of telling members not to arbitrate in New York, but it is mere words.
We can't judge the case, because no details are given, but certain things are clear. It can't be wrong to refuse recourse to the courts in anything other than extreme cases. And if New York arbitrators' fees are too high, they will starve very quickly. Remember, too, that there is more than one arbitration body in New York doing maritime work.
I hold no torch for New York arbitration above any other. But this was not a fair piece of reporting by the club. When I rang to ask for details of the case, I was politely told that the member had withheld permission for this to be given. Now what sort of signal does that send out?
Well met in Auckland
IT won't have escaped the attention of our readers that the International Congress of Maritime Arbitrators is meeting in New Zealand in March next year, just sufficiently late to put a crimp in the plans of anybody looking to combine the event with a couple of weeks watching the England cricket team in the Antipodes.
ICMA X111 looks as if it will be good value for money, as indeed it will have to be if it is to live up to the programme claims of "five days of stimulating debate, informative insights coupled with a sensational programme". 'Sensational' is a word rarely used in connection with arbitration, let alone New Zealand.
But ICMA is a worthy institution. There have been attempts to make it a more formal organisation, with a permanent secretariat, byelaws, and structured membership, but these have thankfully been rejected by those who participate and help make ICMA what it is. ICMA has no mission statement, no structured body other than its steering committee, and no membership. Creating a formalised body or a permanent secretariat would raise questions about funding and intent. And, quite honestly, do the maritime industries need a United Nations of arbitration? Imagine one country, one organisation, each with its own vote.
The real strength of ICMA lies in its informality, which preserves the individuality of each national group and its arbitration rules. The users of the arbitral system can select Paris, New York, Beijing or London arbitration, or anywhere else, and it is not for arbitrators to sacrifice part of their national rules and identity. To create a supranational bureaucracy would stifle the development and growth of national maritime arbitration groups. Better to leave well enough alone, and enjoy Auckland and all the other venues that ICMA will meet at in the years to come.

Commercial nous

"LAWYERS have little else to do but handle cases." Not a bad quote, eh? It comes from Jack Greenbaum, writing in the latest edition of the Mainbrace newsletter published by New York law firm Healy & Baillie, of which Mr Greenbaum is a partner. There are other, similar, gems, in the course of a commonsense and balanced treatise on the commercial nature of maritime arbitration.
Mr Greenbaum notes that the advantages of a tribunal drawn from within the industry include not only arbitrators' familiarity with the subject matter, but their awareness of the thought processes commonly associated with industry problems.
How nice to see somebody, at last, giving some thought to thought processes. This is something you can't realistically bill for by the hour, but it is an integral part of what you pay for, whether you are hiring a lawyer, an arbitrator, a writer or a plumber. It is part of being an expert and, in arbitration, it helps contain the argument within the commercial parameters which are meant to govern this form of dispute resolution.
Mr Greenbaum, too, has heard all the arguments about arbitration becoming too lawyer-dominated. He gives them their due weight, but he points out that arbitration lawyers who have not learned from their mentors the lesson of blending legal and commercial considerations will eventually be educated by the arbitrators and by their own clients. And those who fail to learn will not become experienced arbitration lawyers because they will not long find employment by a knowledgeable clientele who understand why it is they opted for arbitration in the first place.
This assumes that everybody who opts for maritime arbitration is genuinely interested in a speedy and equitable commercial decision. They aren't. But those who aren't will not be looking for lawyers and arbitrators with the qualities that Jack Greenbaum champions, and we will all be better off without them.

Hard facts

COMMONSENSE, too, from the London Maritime Arbitrators' Association. In the latest edition of its newsletter - and oh what a marvellous, 1000 per cent improvement this is on the old one - the LMAA makes a plea for people to stop sending busy arbitrators lengthy faxes, followed by hard copies of same, when there is absolutely no immediate urgency for the fax in the first place.
The LMAA has my support, which will doubtless help it sleep at night. Lawyers are the only people who send me faxes, topheavy with fatuous disclaimers, followed the next day by letters in the post. But we must be patient. It cannot be more than a few short years before lawyers - and arbitrators, for that matter - start using email with the same facility and confidence as the rest of the commercial world.

New age travellers

THE exact middle point, the very dead centre, of middle age is supposed to be when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net. Recently, I received news of two household names in maritime law and arbitration - one of whom took up golf some time ago and the other who has always been too smart to rush up to the net anyway but has enjoyed making me do so on a number of occasions over the years - who have made changes to the way they organise their days at the office. Both are old enough to know there is more to life than work, sufficiently revered to have all the work they want, and young enough to enjoy the benefits which that brings as they travel a new road.
Pat Martin has taken the hint from his chartering clients and has ended his thirty-years-and-then-some pattern of daily commuting to the big city in exchange for the greener pastures of the burbs. He has taken early retirement and withdrawn from the New York partnership of Hill Rivkins & Hayden. And while he will undoubtedly be spending some of his recaptured time smelling the flowers - golfing and fishing in New Jersey, in his case - he will continue to practise - law, that is - at the New Jersey offices of Keane & Marlowe in East Brunswick. And he will remain a consultant to Hill Rivkins.
Keane & Marlowe's Jersey office, which has a busy maritime and admiralty practice, is about halfway between Pat's central Jersey and shore residences. At home, Pat can be reached by every manner of electronic communications known to man. He warns callers, though, that they might have to contend with the background noise of wind and surf. A small sacrifice, given the recent improvement in his lifestyle.
Also in New York, Alexis Nichols, whose career in shipping spans more than forty years, is to become a full-time arbitrator with the Society of Maritime Arbitrators at the end of the year. Alex is giving up his position as president of Marine Management Services MC, in which role he has been shuttling backwards and forwards between New York and Piraeus for some time now. He has been arbitrating for more than twenty-five years. He is a former president of the SMA, and one of the best-known maritime arbitrators in New York. During the last twenty years he has held positions as a director of the American and the Liverpool & London P&I clubs. He joined the SMA in 1972 and was elected its president for two terms in 1986.
In addition to his arbitration work, Alex will also be available to act as a consultant in shipmanagement, chartering, operations, sale and purchase, insurance, claims and ship finance. No doubt a lot of people will continue to see him on the other side of the tennis net, although never rushing up to it.
The test of any vocation is the ability to endure the drudgery it involves. But one of the great sadnesses of our existence is that it takes us so long to organise our work in such a way that it improves rather than impairs the quality of our lives. The ant is generally reckoned to be a wise creature, but it doesn't know enough to take a holiday every now and then.

Words myths

NOW that Lord Mustill has retired, a spirited contest has seemingly developed between Justices Colman and Rix to see who can write the longest judgments. Perhaps the government has secretly started to pay them, like journalists, by the word.

Taking notice

MOST of Spain's maritime law firms are small partnerships. They tend to tuck their offices away in apartment blocks, and very few of them have any notices up outside or signs on the door inside to indicate their presence. You find yourself outside in the street, wondering which bell to press, and inside on dark stairways, peering at old wooden doors, wondering which one conceals the outward-looking, dynamic, international maritime law firm you have come to visit.
Imagine, then, the pleasure of finding, in one of the oldest quarters of Barcelona, not just a name plaque, but a multilingual name plaque announcing the law firm you have come to see. Full of confidence, you enter the hallway, climb to the first floor, and find yourself facing two doors. One is open, revealing what looks very like a busy law office. The other is shut. You enter the open door and are about to politely enquire for Luis Berenguer, partner. A young man looks up, and before you can speak, he points to the other door and says, "It's in there."
The other door turns out to be a customs agent, who directs you back to the first door for the law firm. "Ah," says the young man, "We get so many people who want next door, but no-one ever comes to see us." Try putting up a sign, that's what I say.

Quicker payments

GREAT news. Claims and premiums at Lloyd's will soon be paid more quickly as the Lloyd's Claims Office and the Lloyd's Policy Signing Office move towards a system of daily settlement. This doesn't mean that all claims will be settled on the day they are made, as one baffled colleague imagined, but it is a step in the right direction. And the London Processing Centre (LPC) is also looking at ways to speed up the claims procedure in the company market.
At the moment, claims and premiums passing between syndicates and brokers are settled weekly, which reads better than it sounds. It is now proposed to settle daily. The LPC committee charged with speeding up the claims procedure, meanwhile, is meeting fortnightly. Marvellous. I hope it keeps minutes, so that the hours will look after themselves.

Only in America

A MAN in North Carolina bought a case of rare, very expensive cigars and insured them against ... fire. Within a month he had smoked the lot, and made a claim under his insurance policy for loss as a result of "a series of small fires". The insurers refused to pay, the man sued and - you've guessed it - won in court. But after he had cashed his $15,000 cheque, the insurance company had him arrested and he was subsequently jailed for twenty-four years for intentionally burning the cigars.
This is supposedly a true story. I suspect it as true as another of my favourites involving an army corporal who was court-martialed for burning down the barracks after tumbling drunkenly into bed with a cigarette in the small hours of the morning. He pleaded innocent, claiming the bed was already alight when he got in it.

Yew beauty

I RECENTLY had the pleasure of listening to an evening of anecdotes and poems by barrister and author John Mortimer, most famous for creating that great heroic fatty of literature, Rumpole of the Bailey.
It is hard to pick a highlight from a wonderful evening, but I particularly enjoyed the story of a farmer who was given a six-month prison sentence for chopping down a yew tree. In the cells at the Bailey, a fellow prisoner asked the farmer what he was in for. "I got six months for chopping down a yew tree," said the farmer. "How about you?"
" I got twelve years for rape," answered the wretched prisoner. "Blimey," came back the farmer, "There must have been acres of it."

Web wonder

YOU can now access the Maritime Advocate on the internet. Our address is MaritimeAdvocate.com. There you will find all the back issues of the magazine. Paying subscribers, meanwhile, can find the current issue by typing in their password, which they should have received by now. Any who haven't should contact us by email at edit...@MaritimeAdvocate.com. Happy browsing.