Quadrant Chambers is delighted to be supporting London International Shipping Week for the third time. We will once again be holding our series of three LISW legal breakfast forums. This year, we anticipate the events will be running as a hybrid with a reduced in-person audience at Quadrant House. Please register for each event via Zoom where there is an option to indicate if you would like to attend in person. In person places will be confirmed separately.

Our panel for this session, John Russell QC, Chris Smith QC and Ruth Hosking from Quadrant, were delighted to be joined by Jai Sharma, Head of Cargo Casualty at Clyde & Co. The panel consider future issues and the impact of new technologies on the future of cargo claims. The adoption and impact of electronic documents is considered, with the panel discussing the Law Commission’s consultation paper into electronic trade documents and the question of whether such documents provide better protection against fraud than their paper equivalents. There has been a spate of container overboard cases, the panel consider issues such as the pressure on capacity, steaming speeds, ship stability and parametric rolling. What is the future for unseaworthiness and how will the concept continue to develop, particularly with new technologies?