Russian fuel supplier Big Port Service is appealing a US court decision in what could be the final battle over China Cosco Shipping's exposure to the 2014 OW Bunker collapse.
Big Port’s attorney, Peter Skoufalos of law firm Brown Gavalas & Fromm, notified the federal court for the Southern District of New York of the appeal last week.
He is asking the Second Circuit appeals court to overturn a January ruling in favour of Cosco affiliate China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL).
The Chinese liner giant won the dispute after a two-year Singapore court case and feels it should not have to win again in arbitration.
Blythe Daly of Holland & Knight is representing CSCL in New York.
Competing claims
The underlying dispute concerns 4,000 metric tonnes of fuel that Big Port delivered to the 5,688-teu Xin Chang Shu (built 2005) at Kavkaz, Russia, in November 2014, under a contract with OW Bunker.
A few days later, the Danish bunkering giant went into liquidation, leaving its suppliers around the world unpaid and its shipowner clients in need of legal counsel.
Cosco, whose container liner business then operated under the CSCL name, was one of many owners that faced competing claims from suppliers and OW Bunker’s financier ING Bank for the same fuel delivery.
ING Bank pursued the claims of its defunct debtor vigorously with ship arrests in several jurisdictions, while shipowners tried to determine who to pay.
In January, the federal court in New York found that CSCL had no contract with the physical supplier and was not obligated to arbitrate the dispute before New York-based Society of Maritime Arbitrators, as Big Port has been seeking to force it to do since 2015.
