ABSTRACT
The majority of collisions will involve some degree of fault on the part of all the colliding ships. When this happens, s 187 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, formerly, in part, s 1 of the Maritime Conventions Act 1911, gives the court the power to apportion liability between the ships, applying similar principles to those now applied in general tort law by virtue of the Law Reform (Contributory Negligence) Act 1945. Under s 187, liability is to be ‘in proportion to the degree in which each ship was in fault’. If the relative degrees of fault cannot be ascertained, the court is directed to apportion fault equally. Apportionment of ‘loss’ under the Act covers not only physical damage, but also liability to third parties. 36
In multiple collisions, each ship ’s contribution must be assessed separately. The faults of one or more ships must not be amalgamated to form a single ‘unit’ for the purpose of applying the Act in relation to a third ship. In The Miraflores v The George Livanos (Owners) and Others,37 The Miraflores and The Abadesa collided in the Scheldt. A third ship, The George Livanos, went aground in trying to avoid the colliding vessels. All three ships were at fault. In assessing the share of blame attributable to The George Livanos , the first instance judge treated the initial collision as a single causal unit which was 50% to blame for the grounding of The George Livanos . The George Livanos was therefore 50% to blame for the grounding. The other 50% attributable to the colliding vessels was split one-third as to The Miraflores and two-thirds to The Abadesa . The House of Lords held that this was the wrong approach, because it failed to take into account the degree of blame attributable to each ship, and its causal link with the grounding. Their Lordships reapportioned fault 40% to The Abadesa , 20% to The Miraflores and 40% to The George Livanos .
