The owner of the freighter Ever Given, which closed the Suez Canal for a week in March, is expected to face several hundred or thousands of lawsuits.
According to Arab Net, the size of future cases against the ship's owner was revealed at a court hearing in London on Tuesday, with lawyers winning a court order to suspend any cases. Possible for two months, after Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd, owner of the container ship, and Evergreen Group, the Taiwanese group it operates under a long-term contract, requested it from a judge in London, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier this year, they obtained another order limiting some of the claims against the ship to £84 million ($116 million).
This comes after the nearly 400-meter-long vessel closed the Suez Canal for several days in March, halting transit trade in both directions, disrupting global trade. . Last week, it began its journey outside the canal and left Egyptian waters on Wednesday.
Their owners of the court, Stuart Buckingham, said at the London hearing that the owners expect Evergreen to sue, and they expect thousands more lawsuits to be filed by the owners of the goods. Individuals against individual shipowners.
He added that the suspension of proceedings would allow similar, overlapping claims to be grouped together, reducing legal costs and court time.
Buckingham added that another hearing will take place in two months' time, when owners are provided with more information about any lawsuits against them, allowing them to see the scale of the crisis.< /p>
He said in a lawsuit: The owners' position is that they are not responsible for the grounding accident or its consequences. He added that when the ship was suspended, it was commanded by a captain from the Suez Canal Authority, who had earlier taken over the leadership of the ship from the Suez port to the canal.
It is likely that any claims made in the UK will take years before a resolution is found. Some may be resolved by arbitration, a generally private alternative to long and costly court battles.
