In September 2007, two very different ships crossed paths at sea. Western Neptune was a seismic survey vessel working slowly and towing a long “array” of cables and equipment behind it, like a giant underwater kite string hundreds of meters long. St Louis Express, a fast container ship run by the owners referred to in court as “Philadelphia Express,” came through the area. The container ship did not hit Western Neptune’s hull. Instead, it struck the trailing survey gear—the towed array—causing serious damage to the survey side. The container ship itself was not hurt, so it didn’t ask the court for any money.
Because ships have lots of instruments, there was strong electronic evidence. Investigators used the Voyage Data Recorder (a ship’s “black box”) from St Louis Express. That made it easy to fix the basic facts about courses, speeds, and timing. The main fight in court wasn’t “did a collision happen?”—it was “how much was each side to blame?” The container ship’s side accepted it was mostly at fault, but argued Western Neptune also made mistakes, especially about lookout and communication and about whether it could have “dived” (lowered) its streamers quickly to reduce damage.
Before trial, both sides tried to settle. In April 2008, the defendants offered to split blame 60/40 in favor of Western Neptune. The claimants later asked for 80/20. Talks failed. The trial ran in March 2009. There was a lot of expert debate about “streamer diving”—what it is, whether it was practical, and whether doing it in time would have changed the outcome. There were also problems with late disclosure by Western Neptune’s side. Some important internal documents—including notes about post-accident changes, records of a conversation between the master and watch officer, and material about lookout practices—were only produced right before trial. Those late documents tended to help the container ship’s arguments on lookout and communications and to weaken the claim that diving was impossible or would have made a big difference.
On liability, the judge decided that Western Neptune was the winning party, but not blameless. He apportioned responsibility roughly two-thirds in favor of Western Neptune and one-third against it. In simple terms: the container ship was mainly at fault for plowing into someone else’s gear; the survey ship also carried some fault for how it handled lookout/communication and for the streamer-diving issue. That final split was only about 6.6 percentage points better for Western Neptune than the early 60/40 offer. The total claim was around £25 million, and the exact money for damage (quantum) was left for later assessment.
After the liability judgment on 25 June 2009 came the costs decision on 26 June 2009. Costs are the legal bills—who pays how much of the lawyers’ fees. Usually, the winner gets its costs, but the court can reduce them for good reasons. Here, the judge focused on three things: first, Western Neptune won, but it was also “the author of some of its own misfortune” because it was partly to blame; second, the defendants’ 60/40 offer a year earlier was close to the final outcome, while the claimants’ late 80/20 offer was far off; third, the claimants’ very late disclosure of key documents was real conduct the court could not ignore. On the specific “streamer diving” issue, the defendants essentially won; the court treated that topic as justifying a special adjustment folded into the overall costs outcome.
So the court made a clear, practical order. Western Neptune’s side would not get all of its legal costs. Instead, they could recover 65% of their costs from the defendants, with no order that the claimants pay the defendants anything on that issue. And because big cases rack up big bills, the judge also ordered an immediate payment on account: £250,000 to be paid now, with the exact, final costs figure to be sorted later by the costs judge. That was the end of this chapter: blame two-thirds/one-third, damages to be measured later, and a costs award trimmed to reflect settlement reality, late disclosure, and who truly won which issues.
 collision case: how a container ship hit a seismic survey’s long cables, who was blamed, and what the court finally ordered.){kind=link}