A breach of contract row over a newbuilding for Italian group Prysmian Powerlink is heading to trial in the UK.
David Edwards, QC, sitting as a high court judge, has granted late amendments of claim by small Norwegian designer Salt Ship Design.
This means the January trial date has been scrapped and a new hearing is to take place after 4 May.
The row arises from a €1.91m ($2.1m) 2017 contract between the parties for design work on a new cable-layer for telecommunications contractor and shipowner Prysmian.
Salt is seeking damages for breach of contract.
It has also added a claim for breach of confidence concerning the alleged misuse by Prysmian of what is referred to as its "restricted know-how", as well as a claim for exemplary damages and additional remedies, including an injunction and an inquiry as to damages.
Prysmian resisted these amendments, arguing that they were made "very late" and were "defective or exhibit a lack of clarity in certain respects."
Further work terminated
Edwards said it is common ground between the parties that Salt has performed and has been paid by Prysmian for its phase 1, phase 2 and early engineering work.
In late September 2017, a request for a quotation for the construction of the proposed vessel was sent to a number of shipyards.
Three were short-listed by Prysmian: Vard, Damen and PaxOcean.
It is common ground, however, that no shipbuilding contract was concluded by 31 January 2018.
There were ongoing discussions between the parties both before and after this date.
In February, 2018, there was an exchange of emails which Salt alleges, but Prysmian denies, gave rise to an amendment to the contract or to a new contract.
It is accepted, however, that Prysmian never requested Salt to complete, and that Salt never did complete, any of the phase 3 or 4 work.
Vard complicates the picture
Ultimately, on 8 March, Prysmian sent an email to Salt, in which it said: "Recently a yard in an effort of getting a lower price which could incentivise us to negotiate, suggested a considerable reduction of the purchase price if, among others, they make the design in house.
"We are presently considering this proposal and have asked the yard to produce its own design and an offer to accommodate our overall objective.
"In the meantime we wish to thank you for the work done so far kindly ask you to stop progressing any work on our project."
It added: "We shall pay you for the work done so far and in this connection we ask you to let us have computation of work done in connection with phase 3 of the project for our consideration so that we may be mutually released from any obligation under the above agreement.
"Needless to say that shouldn't we enter into a contract with the yard above we reserve to come back to you and reconsider any further cooperation."
The "yard" referred to is Vard, which had originally tendered for the design of the vessel in early 2017 but had lost out to Salt.
No attempt to use design
Salt disputed Prysmian's entitlement to proceed with the project without it.
But Prysmian made clear that, although it considered that it would be entitled to use Salt's design work for the new vessel, it did not propose to do so.
Salt sent a letter of claim in May last year, asserting that Prysmian was not free to terminate the contract, to deprive Salt of its rights as exclusive designer, and to proceed to build the vessel using another design.
Prysmian denied all this.
Edwards said: "I accept that the proposed amendments will cause the January 2020 trial date to be lost, and to that extent are to be regarded as very late amendments.
"There is some scope for criticising Salt for the time taken to bring forward the proposed amendments following the 18 April 2019 mediation, but I reject the submission that Salt is seriously to be criticised for delays before then."
