A US appeals court has ruled that a legal row between a fuel supplier and Hapag-Lloyd arising from the collapse of OW Bunker can go to trial in what has been claimed as a landmark decision.
The judgement relates to two cases involving US Oil Trading (USOT) and the German container line.
USOT supplied bunkers to four vessels owned and/or chartered by Hapag-Lloyd and never received payment for the fuel as a result of OW Bunker's bankruptcy.
The appeal court found that “purchase orders and admissions by Hapag in these actions permit a conclusion that Hapag directed that USOT be the subcontractor to supply the fuel, thereby bringing USOT within an established exception that allows maritime liens to be asserted by subcontractors whose selection was controlled or directed by the vessel’s owner/charterer.”
The court vacated May 2017 orders and partial final judgements of the US district court for the southern district of New York’s Judge Valerie E Caproni.
It remanded the matters for trial “on the issue of whether Hapag directed that USOT be the physical supplier pursuant to the exception to the subcontractor rule.”
The district court had previously rejected USOT's claim, ruling its fuel sales were not made "on the order of the owner or a person authorised by the owner" of the vessel.
USOT had argued at appeal that the court had erred because Hapag's purchase orders specified that the physical supplier of the fuel was to be USOT.
Lawyer Clyde & Co, acting for USOT, said the decision is believed to mark the first ruling by a US federal court of appeals in favour of a physical supplier in the OW Bunker cases where the court found a physical supplier may have a maritime lien within the exception to the subcontractor line of cases.
USOT is represented by John Keough, Corey Greenwald, George Cornell and Laura Gongaware of Clyde & Co’s New York office.
