Legal Disputes under Time Charter in Connection with the Stranding of the MV Ever Given

Abstract

The MV Ever Given’s stranding in the Suez Canal in March 2021 prompted renewed awareness of the heightened risk of marine accidents in narrow channels as global shipping companies continuously expand vessel sizes. However, there has been limited consideration of ways to improve accident response, and little analysis of future-oriented liabilities and damage compensation schemes for similar maritime accidents. First, key issues related to the Suez Canal stranding accident were analyzed based on web crawling using the R studio program (Version: R-4.0.5) to extract text data from unstructured format text (HTML tags). We designed the research questions to address the key issues/disputes, such as definitions of legal terms related to the Ever Given’s stranding accident and the declaration of a general average (G/A), liability for maintaining seaworthiness, source of command authority over the captain, and liability for compensation for delay in delivery. Then, the liability of stakeholders was legally interpreted through causal inductive reasoning based on relevant legal theories and precedents. To help secure safe and sustainable shipping routes, this study demystifies the problems resulting from the side effects of the trend of ultra-large vessels based on technology bias, and will contribute to responses to similar accidents in the future.