Proctor in Admiralty

Sorry for the lack of posts

I have been slack in my posting duties lately but I have been very busy making a big job change.  I am leaving private practice to join a large shipping line as its US legal counsel.  I am excited about the move and hopefully I will have new information to share here from the perspective of in house counsel  I also hope to bring in guest bloggers from the company who can post about significant developments in the liner business.

For example, I was meeting with the VP of Information Systems and he was discussing the concept of scrapping the bill of lading practice as we know it today.  As he sees it, the function of IT in shipping lines today is to try and force a paper based transaction into a computer model - hence Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).  As EDI as not been successfully deployed maritime industry wide and there are competing standards galore, he believes that scrapping the entire system and reinventing the transaction as a purely electronic transaction not based on a paper model would be the long term solution.   For a good overview of the history of EDI and the problems associated with it in the maritime industry - see this paper by Edmund Greiner

Once I get settled, I will try to get the VP to guest blog about this topic.

Map to the Federal Courts and some interesting resources for cocktail party chatter

Thanks to Denise Howell at Bag and Baggage for this post with some great links:

Take That, Pat Robertson.

The ABA has put together a collection of resources, the Supporting America's Judiciary Toolkit, "to help lawyers, bar leaders or anyone working to address the attacks on our judiciary." And for those seeking to find the judiciary (the federal ones, anyway), here's "a new interactive map that shows each of the 12 regional judicial circuits and 94 judicial districts. Clicking on the map will take you to links for the Web sites of the federal courts in a particular circuit or district." (via Genie Tyburski)

Electronic Notice of Arrival/Departure

Thanks to Dennis Bryant at Holland & Knight for advising that the United States Coast Guard National Vessel Movement Center (NVMC) reports that the final version of its electronic Notice of Arrival/Departure (e-NOA/D) is available.  According to Bryant, electronic submission of the NOA fulfills the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) requirement and that caution must be exercised in completing and submitting NOA/D to avoid inadvertent errors and unintended duplications.

This should be of great assistance to Masters and to shore side agents involved in filing and updating NOAs.  As is widely known in the maritime community, the USCG is now strictly enforcing the NOA requirements, the violation of which carries a maximum penalty of $32,500 per occurrence.

 

The benefits of Equasis.org

While speaking with a fellow member of the Maritime Law Association of the United States last week during one of the cocktail parties held during the Association's May meetings, the subject turned to the benefits of using the Equasis website.  While we both believe the site is widely used by maritime lawyers, I felt that it was worth mentioning here just in case some of you had not heard of it.

Equasis is a free to use  information system that was developed initially by the European Commission and French maritime administrations to collect and publish safety related data concerning vessels, their owners and operators.   Information is collected from both public and private sources and covers most commercial vessels sailing today.

Current sources of data include: port state control regimes, classification societies, the International Group of P&I Clubs, Intertanko, Intercargo, the International Ship Manager's Association, Lloyd's Register Fairplay and numerous others.

Governmental entities that participate in providing information include, the maritime administrations of the European Commission, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan and the United States Coast Guard.

Data available includes the name of the vessel, type of vessel, year of construction, flag,  gross tonnage, name and address of the registered owner, name and address of the operator, certificate information including P&I and hull underwriter information, as well as a list of all violations, the date, location and nature of that violation.

Much of this detailed  information can be very useful to maritime attorneys in a variety of ways and is the only source known at this time that provides this level of information for free.  All that is required is for the user to complete a  registration form.

Jacksonville Port Installs Radiation Monitors

Ten radiation monitors have been installed at the Jacksonville Port Authority in Florida by US Customs to scan all imported shipping containers for nuclear weapons and dirty bombs prior to leaving the port.
Link: First Coast News | Local News.