[BITList] sue, sue, sue

[CT's]

    hugh

    that is only because you don't have the facile thought process of a lawyer! anyone or any entity connected however tenuously to an object is fair game.
    the lawyer's goal is to find as many deep pockets as possible and extract as much money as possible to pay his client and his own not inconsiderable fees and expenses.
    for example, in the case of a crane; crane breaks down, some one is injured. 
    lawyer demands the history of the crane [some one must have been negligent for crane to break - things don't break on their own].
    what is this? - ABS {say} surveyor inspected crane 2 days [say] before breakdown - made no recommendations - said it was in good working order.
    obviously it wasn't, otherwise it would not have broken. therefore it must be the fault of ABS whose employee clearly was incompetent.
    Sue ABS and everyone else remotely connected with the vessel................................get lots of money.

    According to Google - in the case of the "Prestige" oil spill of the Spanish coast in 2002, Spanish investigators have concluded that the failure in the Prestige's hull was entirely predictable and indeed had been predicted already: the Prestige's two sister ships, Alexandros and Centaur, had been submitted to extensive inspections under the "Safe Hull" program in 1996. The company which was in charge of the inspections, the American Bureau of Shipping, found that both Alexandros and Centaur were in terminal decline. Due to metal fatigue in their hulls, modeling predicted that both ships would fail at frames 61 and 71 within five years. Alexandros, Centaur and a third sister ship, Apanemo were all scrapped between 1999 and 2002. For some reason, however, Prestige was not scrapped, and, little more than five years after the inspection, as predicted, Prestige's hull failed between frames 61 and 71.[1]
    For the world maritime industry, a key issue raised by the Prestige incident was whether classification societies can be held responsible for the consequences of incidents of this type. 

    In May 2003, the Kingdom of Spain brought civil suit in the Southern District of New York against the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the Houston-based international classification society that had certified the Prestige as "in class" for its final voyage. The "in class" status states that the vessel is in compliance with all applicable rules and laws, not that it is or is not safe. On 2 January 2007, the docket in that lawsuit (SDNY 03-cv-03573) was dismissed. The presiding judge ruled that ABS is a "person" as defined by the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage (CLC) and, as such, is exempt from direct liability for pollution damage. Additionally, the Judge ruled that, since the United States is not a signatory to the International CLC, the US Courts lack the necessary jurisdiction to adjudicate the case. Spain's original damage claim against ABS was some $700 million.

    International maritime trade publications including TradeWinds, Fairplay and Lloyd's List regularly presented the dispute as a possibly precedent-setting one that could prove fateful for international classification societies, whose assets are dwarfed by the scale of claims to which they could become subject. 

    the liability aspect is probably the reason LRS now calls it's self a charity!

    and as you know, classification societies don't insure vessels.

    ct




From: HUGH 
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 2:45 PM
To: BitList 
Subject: Re: [BITList] at fault-food for thought


Colin,

I'm at a loss to see how a classification society, per se, could be sued for anything arising from a defect in a ship.  Lloyds, dNV, et al, provide rules that shipbuilders must follow if the ships are to be insured by them.  The societies don't build ships - the onus is on the builder to build them and the shipping company to operate them, though a legal responsibility for some aspects may lie with individuals within these latter.

Hugh.


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