[BITList] MOL Comfort

[Michael Feltham]

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MOL sues shipbuilder Mitsubishi for splitting of MOL Comfort's hull

MITSUI OSK Lines (MOL) is suing Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for US$132 million because of alleged defects in building 8,110-TEU MOL Comfort that split in two and sank in Indian Ocean little more than a year ago.
"The double-bottom structure

contained defects in design,
rendering it incapable of enduring
the foreseeable working loads a
vessel of this size and type should
be capable of safely withstanding,"
said MOL lawyers from Yoshida
& Partners. "The defects should
have been foreseeable and
avoidable at the design and
construction stage. It was strongly
suspected that this breach was caused by insufficient buckling strength of the double-bottom hull," they said. The ship was carrying 4,372 boxes at the time of the sinking, all of which were lost overboard. Subsequent inspection of the five sister ships found buckling deformation of about 20 millimetres at locations the shipping line said were "close" to where the MOL Comfort began to split.
Although it made no conclusions, an investigation committee formed by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism said in an interim report that the breach could have resulted from excessive work load or deformation of bottom shell plating. MOL said there was a lack of evidence to suggest an excessive load, which would have heightened risk in extreme weather or uneven distribution of container weight. "The uneven distribution of cargo weight would not be so significant in practice that it would be capable of causing a breach of the vessel's bottom hull structure," said the lawyers' brief. Source : Asian Shipper _____________________________________________________________________________________ 
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