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About

Shipping, Trade, Offshore Energy

 

More maritime disputes are referred to arbitration in London than to any other venue worldwide. The LMAA’s members have a wide range of experience and expertise, together covering almost anything which floats or is fixed to the seabed.

Maritime Disputes

• Shipping: all aspects, such as:
– Charterparties and carriage of goods by sea, including bills of lading and COAs
– Carriage of passengers
– Shipbuilding, conversion, machinery breakdown, repair and refit
– Ship sale and purchase
– Operations, management, agency and brokerage
– Ship casualties, collision, grounding, salvage and pollution
– Bunkering
– Marine insurance and P&I coverage
– Pool arrangements

This category extends beyond cargo-carrying ships to specialised vessels, military craft, yachts and superyachts.

• International trade and commodities, for example:
– Trading and sale contracts, including quantity and quality, late and non-delivery, laytime, demurrage and detention
– Finance, including letters of credit
– Insurance, including trade disruption
– Performance guarantees

• Offshore energy, including:
– Drilling, heavy lift and other offshore service contracts
– Offshore construction
– The building, conversion, repair, refit and sale of specialised vessels
– Boat charters for oil and gas and renewables, including wind farms
– Offshore decommissioning

Our Members’ Services

• Arbitration
• Alternative Dispute Resolution:
Mediation
Adjudication and Dispute Resolution Boards
Early Neutral Evaluation

Our Terms and Procedures

Arbitrations in London are conducted under the Arbitration Act 1996. LMAA members usually accept arbitration appointments in maritime cases on the LMAA Terms. Non-member arbitrators may do so too. These then apply to and govern the procedure adopted in the arbitration.

The LMAA has also a Small Claims Procedure (SCP) and an Intermediate Claims Procedure (ICP) which together offer those involved in maritime matters a wide range of choice for the resolution of disputes referred to arbitration.

The Terms and Procedures are periodically reviewed and updated. The current versions are the LMAA Terms 2021, the LMAA ICP 2021 and the LMAA SCP 2021.

For mediation, our current terms are the LMAA Mediation Terms 2002.

Objects of the LMAA

The LMAA is an association of practising arbitrators. One of our main objects is:

“to advance and encourage the professional knowledge of London maritime arbitrators and, by recommendation and advice, to assist the expeditious procedure and disposal of disputes”.

Not being an institution, the LMAA does not administer arbitrations and so no administrative fees are charged. For a modest one-off fee, the LMAA can assist with the appointment of arbitrators where the parties so agree or cannot agree on a sole.

We publish Advice on Ethics for our members, publicly available on our website.

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