On 4th April 2019 the Supreme Court granted permission to appeal against the decision of the Court of Appeal in Evergreen Marine UK Ltd v Nautical Challenge Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 2173 in relation to the collision between the large container vessel “EVER SMART” and the VLCC “ALEXANDRA 1” just outside the dredged entrance/exit channel to the port of Jebel Ali in the United Arab Emirates in 2015.

Simon Rainey QC was brought in, following the decision of the Court of Appeal, to seek permission to appeal and will represent Evergreen on the appeal, leading Nigel Jacobs QC and instructed by Ince Gordon Dadds - Faz Peermohamed, Sophie Henniker-Major, Lida Logotheti, James Drummond and Patrick Ryan. 

This will be the first collision liability case to go to Supreme Court, and the first such case to reach the final appellate court since 1976.

The Supreme Court will consider the important issue of the relationship between the narrow channel rule (Rule 9) and the crossing rules (Rules 15 -17) of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972.

The interaction of these rules occurs on numerous occasions on a daily basis throughout the world. The crossing rules not only apply to a situation which occurs continuously in navigation but to one where the need for clear and strict guidance as to what each vessel is to do when a crossing situation arises is of particular importance. In one of the leading cases on the crossing rules, the Court stressed that the crossing rules should not lightly be held to be inapplicable but “ought to be applied and strictly enforced because they tend to secure safe navigation” (per Lord Wright in The Alcoa Rambler [1949] AC 236 (PC) at 250).

The Court will determine the correctness of the approach of the Court of Appeal (and of the Admiralty Judge) in (a) treating Rules 9 and 15 as effectively mutually exclusive of each other in the common situation of one vessel navigating in a narrow channel and another vessel approaching the same channel and intending to enter it so that the crossing rule was inapplicable in such a situation and also (b) in treating Rule 15 and the crossing rule as a general principle as only ever capable of applying where the putative give-way vessel is on a “steady course”.