Clarksons has secured a court order in London throwing out a claim by Today Makes Tomorrow chairman Nobu Su seeking to hold the shipbroker’s FFA arm liable in the Taiwan shipowner’s fight with Monaco-based shipowner Polys Haji-Ioannou.
High Court Justice Nigel Teare issued a summary judgment holding that Su waited too long to lodge a claim against Clarksons Platou Futures and futures broker Vassilis Karakoulakis for breach of warranty and negligence.
Su has been pursuing a lawsuit against the London shipbroking giant’s FFA subsidiary alleging in part that it never should have personally linked the TMT chairman to 2008 future freight agreements with Lakatamia that ultimately failed.
Personally liable?
Su contends he was never ‘onboarded’ as a client of Clarksons - instead instructing them as a director of a company - and therefore could not be found personally liable in the Lakatamia case.
Another claim by Su against Clarksons and Karakoulakis remains outstanding.
As TradeWinds has reported, Haji-Ioannou’s Lakatamia Shipping secured a judgment in 2014 that put Su on the hook for nearly $37.9m in the case, rather than just the TMT entity that sold the FFAs to the Monaco shipowner and then failed to live up to a deal to buy them back.
Clarksons did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Su’s allegations.
In court, the company’s barrister, Richard Millett of Essex Court Chambers, argued that Su’s claim against the shipbroker is “time barred” because Su should have launched proceedings within six years of July 2008, or at the latest within three years of a 2012 judgment in which a judge wrote that that there was a case for holding the shipping mogul personally liable in the case.
Su’s barrister, Jonathan Crystal of Goldsmith Chambers, countered that the clock did not start until High Court Justice Jeremy Cooke issued his 2014 judgment that ultimately determined that the TMT chairman is liable.
“Mr Crystal’s submission that the cause of action accrued on the date when Cooke gave judgment is, in my judgement, untenable,” wrote Teale.
The judge also said any reasonable person would have taken the Cooke’s 2012 pronouncement that Su could eventually be found personally liable to be serious enough to consider legal proceedings against Clarkson at that time.
Remote possibility
Su has said in a witness statement that he thought at that time that it was only a remote possibility that he would have been found liable.
Millett is backed by solicitors at CMS Cameron McKenna, while Crystal is backed by solicitors at W Legal.
Primary source: Read the judgment by Justice Nigel Teare
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