Maersk has decided to wage a full-scale legal battle against Evergreen.
The focus of the dispute is the Evergiven incident, the container ship that ran aground in the Suez Canal in March 2021, blocking transit in both directions for six days and causing huge losses for ships and ship owners due to the disruption of supply chains.
The Danish carrier has made a claim against the shipowner (as charterer), ship manager Bernard Schulte and owner Shoei Kisen Kaisha.
The figures involved and dates of the hearings have not been disclosed. What is certain, however, is that Maersk’s victory could prompt many other carriers to make similar claims, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Translation by Giles Foster