Extracts from 2019 Judgment of UKHC(Admiralty Division)



The provisions of CPR Part 61 contain different rules from those applying in other courts and in Admiralty matters it has long been established that to obtain a default judgment it is necessary to satisfy the Court that there is a proper claim and that the sums sought are appropriate.

Waddle v Wallsend Shipping Co Ltd [1952] and The European Gateway [1987] QB 206

Since then the Regulations contained in the Merchant Shipping (Accident and Investigation) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1743) have been implemented.

The 2012 Regulation provides that the issue of the report’s admissibility is only specifically proscribed if the judicial proceedings have the purpose of attributing or apportioning liability or blame. As the present proceedings are solely dealing with issues of salvage and not the apportionment of fault or blame it appears to me that the 2012 Regulation does not prevent the MAIB report from being admitted in evidence.

it is incorrect to say that English law recognises the existence of a right to, or liability for, any award based simply upon services gratuitously given to anyone or anything including a vessel. The exception to this is where the services are recognised as being salvage either by agreement, as in the case of an LOF, or where the circumstances are such that the services are recognised as salvage by virtue of the Salvage Convention, in which case an award of salvage may be made.

However in the absence of salvage, by agreement or otherwise, a claimant may be able to recover on the basis of quantum meruit but, in my view, only where he can establish that there is in existence an express or implied contract for the provision of some services other than salvage, for example towage. Thus I do not accept that it is open to a claimant to simply assert a right to a recovery based upon quantum meruit as an alternative claim if he fails to establish that the circumstances are such as to render the case one of salvage. In my view this is made clear by the dictum of Bowen LJ in Falcke v Scottish Imperial Insurance Co. (1886) 34 Ch D. 234 at 248 where it was said: “The general principle is, beyond all question, that work and labour done or money expended by one man to preserve or benefit the property of another do not according to English law create any lien upon the property saved or benefited, nor, even if standing alone, create any obligation to repay the expenditure. Liabilities are not to be forced upon people behind their backs any more than you can confer a benefit upon a man against his will. There is an exception to this proposition in the maritime law. I mention it because the word “salvage” has been used from time to time throughout the argument, and some analogy is sought to be established between salvage and the right claimed by the Respondents. With regard to salvage, general average, and contribution, the maritime law differs from the common law. That has been so from the time of the Roman law downwards. The maritime law, for the purposes of public policy and for the advantage of trade, imposes in these cases a liability upon the thing saved, a liability which is a special consequence arising out of the character of mercantile enterprises, the nature of sea perils, and the fact that the thing saved was saved under great stress and exceptional circumstances. No similar doctrine applies to things lost upon land, nor to anything except ships or goods in peril at sea.”