A New York lawsuit in the ongoing legal fight between Icon Capital and Advantage Tankers has come to a quick end.
Two weeks after it was filed against the shipowner over its alleged ties to Geden Lines, Manhattan federal District Judge Jesse Furman threw out Advantage Tankers' lawsuit against an Icon-run fund.
The legal action by the Geneva-headquartered shipowner was aiming to recoup $10.3m from the alleged wrongful arrest of the 156,644-dwt Advantage Sky (built 2010) in South Africa last fall.
Furman ruled that Advantage's claims were based on a letter of undertaking issued in the South African case, which was not in itself a maritime claim.
"Although the South African litigation between plaintiffs and the [Icon Equipment and Corporate Infrastructure Fund Fourteen Liquidating Trust's] subsidiaries may well involve maritime claims, those claims are not at issue here," he wrote in his 14 June decision.
Last year, three shipowning companies controlled by Icon sued in South Africa to arrest the Advantage Sky in an attempt to obtain security for two claims in London and one in New York state court totalling $75m from charters gone bad in 2016.
Those claims involved ships Mehmet Emin Karamehmet-led Geden Lines chartered in 2010 before allegedly defaulting on in 2016.
Icon has maintained in court proceedings that when Geden reorganised itself in 2015, Advantage Tankers was effectively a new company in name only. Karamehmet's daughter, Gulsun Nazli Karamehmet-Williams, owns 85% of Advantage, but Icon says the elder Karamehment remains in charge.
