Study On The Associated Ship Arrest Laws In South Africa And Avoiding Risks For Shipowners

The associated ship provisions is one of the most typical legal system in the South African Admiralty Jurisdiction. The provisions encompass some fairly revolutionary concepts, which constitute a significant extension of the sister-shiparrest provisions set out in the 1952 Arrest Convention. When some countries in the world were arguing opinionatedly for the sister-ship provisions, the South African Law had allowed for the commencement of in rem proceedings by the arrest of the associated vessel on relatively broad grounds. The associated ship provisions create substantive rights and obligations, which is not only a procedural device. In order to protect the legal rights and interests of the claimant, the provisions assist the claimant to acquires a right which he never had before, namely to recover what is due to him from a party who was not responsible for the damage suffered by him, because the claimant was at such a disadvantage in tracing the mobile and elusive assets. However, the innovative, expansive and claimant friendly nature of associated ship provisions have weighted the owners' burden . which had not been accepted by most of the countries in the world. In recent case, many state-owned ship have been arrested in South African for the associated ship provisions, which result in some serious harms and the dire financial implications of an arrest. Taking the associated ship provisions as the subject studied, this thesis has deeply analyzed the implications of the provisions. In the meantime this thesis has discussed the risks that the ships in our country are easy to be arrested in South Africa and put forward some proposal concerned therewith how to avoid it.