Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
INSOLVENCY AT SEA
Sir Jonathan Mance *
The Third Party (Rights against Insurers) Act 1930 has rendered valuable assistance to liability claimants. Its adequacy under modern conditions and as a result of legal and commercial developments is in question. This article, reflecting the text of a lecture given in November 1994, considers the Act’s general scope, territorial application and operation. It discusses the impact of Bradley v. Eagle Star and The Fanti, and considers the working of the Act’s provisions for informing claimants about liability insurance and for protecting them against an insured’s conduct imperilling, waiving or failing to preserve or comply with policy cover or conditions. The conclusion suggested is that the legislature should revisit the area.
This is the 12th in the series of lectures now held in honour of Donald O’May. The first lecturer was Michael Summerskill who will himself now be sadly missed. The series brings together each year practitioners and users, academics and students in the very appropriate forum of the Institute of Maritime Law in what might be viewed as a real-life illustration of Lord Goff’s words in Spiliada Maritime Corp. v. Cansulex Ltd. (The Spiliada):1
For jurists are pilgrims with us on the endless road to unattainable perfection; and we have it on the excellent authority of Geoffrey Chaucer that conversations among pilgrims can be most rewarding.
To those of you who have travelled to Southampton from London or elsewhere, I hope that the conversations have so far been rewarding. For my part, in preparing this lecture I have been comforted by the thought that perfection is unattainable. One of my distinguished predecessors even insured himself at the very outset by professing that what he had to say was of breathtaking superficiality. Another suggested that his successors might choose between a broad perspective (his own approach) and a specific topic. I have taken the title “Insolvency at sea”, although I did flirt with the alternative “At sea with insolvency”. Now that you are induced here in the belief that you are about to listen to exciting tales of bankrupt owners of goods in bulk, or competing claims to sub-freights, I can tell you that my main focus will be on the old age of that companion of liability claimants, the Third Party (Rights against Insurers) Act 1930, and a need for rejuvenation if the Act is not to fall by the wayside.
But first let me say a further word about Donald O’May in whose honour we are here.
* Justice of the High Court of Justice. This is a revised version of the Donald O’May Lecture in Maritime Law, delivered at the Institute of Maritime Law of the University of Southampton on 16 November 1994.
1. [1987] A.C. 460, 488.
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