Legal Appraisal of Maritime Liens in Admiralty Business: Practice and Procedure in Nigeria
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Date
2018
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
West African Journal of Business and Management Sciences
Abstract
Sometime, when a maritime lien arises from the claim and the owner(s) of the ship
or the ship itself or both of them need to be held responsible for the deed of their
ship, the appropriate parties to be included in an actions at times often missed and
thereby create an irreparable vacuum and rendered the judgment unenforceable or
too difficult to enforce. This is as a result of misunderstanding of or confusion as to
the kind of cause of action that can ground an admiralty action in rem warranting
the arrest of the ship or there ("a thing") or the kind of maritime claim to ground an
action in 'personam'. Ex parte orders of arrests of the ship or other maritime 'res'
have usually been set aside and the arrested ship or maritime 'res' released because
the person who would be liable in an action in 'person am' was not the beneficial
owner of the vessel as it was stated in the case of M.V.S. Araz v. LPG Shippings A.
(1993 — 1995) 5 NSC 298. The court among other things held that such
indiscriminate arrest of ship on insufficient grounds or without good cause, occasion
undue delay and colossal loss and expense to ship owners or charterers or owners of
the 'res' arrested and are goods basis for application to court by defendants for
compensation