Preface: PRC court may get on board vessel to serve legal documents under circumstances of evidence-preservation, ship arrest or maritime injunction order being issued against vessel /owners.  Below notes are set for the owner interests’ reference.

Owner/ Master’s right of acknowledgement:

1)    Legal or administrative documents should be served only by court or governmental officers such as MSA etc. on board vessel; it cannot be served by vessel’s agent to the Master instead of or in the absence of judges/court clerk or public officer.

2)        Be wise to cooperate with the PRC court or authority during service on board, but apply to take time to communicate ASAP with owners; and

3)        To contact accordingly with owners’ agent or Club’s instructed correspondent/lawyers etc at early possible stage;

4)        Master / vessel is entitled to ask for free English version of legal documents or administrative order to be served; although translation fee so incurred might be borne by the vessel side.  Nowadays it is easy to have free English version of related court orders prepared in advance save as to time and for easy communication during service;

5)    To ask for contact details/ business cards of court judges / opponent party whoever have applied for the court order etc;

6)     Vessel /Master to sign for receipt of legal documents with “Remarks”, in the presence of ship agent or correspondent / or lawyers instructed.

Owners/carriers are free to raise objection or to submit Application for Review to PRC court

Case Analysis- MV N-E

Court order was served on board and court appointed surveyor got on board around June2009 inport LYG, Shanghai Maritime Court(SMC) ordered for surveyors from Qingdao to conduct sample-sampling and inspection and analysis on cause of incident, which was rejected by owners with solid reasons, eventually the SMC gave up court surveyors, and agreed for parties concerned to appoint SGS surveyor to take samples during vessel’s dry-dock in Shanghai which saved considerable costs and reduced potential risks of oil spill and other dangers.

Owners submitted > to the court to reject the order, and also sent W/P letters to opponent side to hold them fully liable for potential risk/losses if any which may be incurred by wrongful application in breach of PRC law. It reads in owners’ WP letter that

“Should your clients’ charterers insist to conduct vessel survey in port LYG (which is neither safe nor practical), such application was in breach of related PRC law at current Evidence-Preservation procedures, thus put vessel into potential danger and risks of pollution to cargo holds etc, and cause extra costs, losses and vessel detention in LYG.

Owner's interests hereby reserve full of their rights to raise claim against your clients and party liable for all costs, losses, damages which may incurred to the vessel, in addition to owners' requested GA contribution as declared on 1st June 2009.

It further reads in Owners’ WP letter that

In short, owners consider that:

i) Vessel condition survey can be conducted by charterers'/owners' /cargo interest's surveyors, who already got on board from time to time since port Moresby,& LYG;

ii) Fuel oil-sampling can be conducted by more professional SGS surveyors in Shanghai who have better facility and lab., rather than that of Qingdao surveyors, it is well noted that charterers and their P&I surveyor also prefers for SGS to take fuel sampling in Shanghai.

It is no need for court to instruct surveyors, and court surveyors may have NO facility /lab for fuel sampling /keeping and analysis.  Parties concerned are ALL happy for SGS to take fuel sampling in Shanghai.

Eventually, the applicant and court gave up for instructed court surveyors from Qingdao to conduct sample inspection in LYG, instead, all parties finally agreed to use SGS surveyors during vessel’s dry docking in Shanghai.  Application for Review was proved worthwhile, acceptable and successful, which well protected the owner’s interests.