Legal Services

Trading and shipping deals involve financial and legal risk.
This can lead to misunderstandings often in relation to freight,
demurrage and cargo quantity and quality provisions which
can often not be resolved between the parties’ commercial teams.

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With our team’s unique blend of legal expertise, gained through working for leading London shipping and trading solicitors, as well as in house counsel within the petroleum industry and claims teams managers for Oil Majors

Knowledge & Reputation

The Legal Services team within Pequod have in-depth industry knowledge, a growing reputation within the petroleum industry as the “go-to” training provider and a vast contact database. We believe that we can provide our clients with straightforward, focused, commercial and practical legal advice and support which will help them resolve disputes quickly and amicably, whilst also importantly limiting the damage done by those disputes to commercial relationships.

Court Proceedings

If the dispute involves court proceedings, we will still manage those proceedings for our clients but would elicit help from our trusted team of outside solicitors. Again, we have a proven track record of success in such court proceedings including the recently reported case of The Santa Isabella [2019] EWHC 3152 (Comm) in which we acted for the successful defendant charterers, in a demurrage dispute where owners were claiming around US$800k in demurrage. https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Comm/2019/3152.html

Arbitration Proceedings

However, if these disputes cannot be resolved amicably, just as any firm of solicitors would do, in the case of arbitration proceedings, we would run them in conjunction with a barrister. We have a track record of successfully both recovering money for our clients and defending claims brought against them in such proceedings.

Additional Terms & Contract Clauses

We also advise and assist our clients with the drafting of charter party additional terms and sale contract clauses.

Our client base includes many of the world’s leading petroleum traders, foreign law firms and insurers.

In terms of the way that we charge for our services, we offer our clients a variety of options. We have retainer agreements with various oil traders but can also work on “no win no fee” or at an hourly rate.

For more information, please contact davidclark@pqd2021.preview-site.co.uk