Al Khattiya vs Jag Laadki: Fujairah Collision and Charter Disclosure Ruling
In February 2017, two very big ships were sitting near Fujairah, an area where ships often stop to wait or refuel. One was the LNG carrier Al Khattiya. The other was the VLCC (a very large crude oil tanker) called Jag Laadki. Something went badly wrong with keeping safe distances and watches. Jag Laadki moved and hit Al Khattiya. In plain words, it crashed into her. The owners of Jag Laadki accepted that the crash was their fault. They said they were 100% responsible for causing the collision. That meant the only real fight left was about where the case should be decided, what the rules would be, and how much money would be paid to fix the loss.
After the crash, the owners of Al Khattiya wanted to claim their losses in the courts of England and Wales. To do that in admiralty law, they arrested or targeted a “sister ship” of Jag Laadki when it came to Milford Haven in Wales. That step let the English Admiralty Court hear the claim. The owners of Jag Laadki did not like that. They wanted the case to happen in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) instead. So they started their own case in the UAE and asked the English court to “stay” (pause) the English case until the UAE case could decide the issues.
Why did they care so much about the place of trial? Because the place can change the money limits. Under the 1976 Limitation Convention, which the UAE applies, Jag Laadki’s owners said their total payout could be limited to about USD 14.7 million. In the United Kingdom, however, there is a later legal update—called the 1996 Protocol—that raises those limits. Under that newer protocol (which the UK follows), the limit would be well above the roughly USD 30 million that Al Khattiya’s owners said they lost. Put simply, the UAE limit could cap the payout around 14.7 million, while the UK rules would likely allow a much higher number. Even so, both sides agreed that this difference in limits could not be used as a reason, by itself, to choose one court over the other. There is a leading case—Western Regent—that says you cannot pick the forum just to chase a nicer limit.
While everyone waited for the English court to decide in February 2018 whether to keep the case in England or send it to the UAE, another fight broke out. The owners of Jag Laadki asked the English court to order the owners of Al Khattiya to hand over lots of information right away. They said, “We need these facts and documents now to argue properly about the forum.” In other words, they claimed they could not make a fair argument about where the case should run without seeing details of the losses. The judge’s task was to decide whether early disclosure was truly needed just to resolve the “which court” question.
What information did the Jag Laadki side want? The Al Khattiya side had given a very short list of losses. It was like a shopping list with only three big lines: (1) repair costs of about USD 15 million; (2) loss of use of the ship of about USD 14 million; and (3) loss of LNG “heel,” bunkers (fuel), and superintendent costs of about USD 1 million. That was all. They also said that when they wrote “loss of use,” they really meant “loss of hire” under a long time charter. Al Khattiya was on a long-term contract to carry LNG, and missing days meant missing hire. The Jag Laadki side asked for details and for the actual charter document. The Al Khattiya side resisted, and even when they admitted there was a long charter, they didn’t hand over the charter party. That made the Jag Laadki side complain that they couldn’t test the numbers or the rules that would apply to damages.
Now, step back and imagine you are the judge. You first ask: “Do I need to order early disclosure to fairly decide the forum fight?” Usually, early disclosure before the main case even starts is unusual. Courts don’t often force one side to deliver documents at the very beginning. But a court can do so if it is necessary to decide a key preliminary step—like which country should hear the case. The Jag Laadki side said it was necessary here. The Al Khattiya side said it was not, and also raised worries about confidentiality and timing.
The judge looked carefully at what the forum question really required. He noted that many important links were obvious without seeing every receipt and email. The crash happened at a UAE anchorage. There were connections to Qatar too, because Al Khattiya was repaired there and the claimants were based there. England’s connection came from the sister-ship arrest and the English proceedings. The judge said that identifying and weighing these connections did not require detailed numbers on the loss. You did not need invoices and daily hire statements to decide whether the UAE was a more appropriate forum than England. It was also possible to understand and compare the basic legal rules without the extra paperwork. For example, the parties had already made arguments about how UAE law might handle damages (such as whether a pre-existing weakness in a ship matters to the final bill). Those legal questions could be addressed through expert evidence on law, not through piles of factual documents about this specific ship’s bills—at least not yet, not just to decide the forum.
The judge also warned both sides not to attack each other’s motives. The Jag Laadki side had hinted that Al Khattiya’s owners were hiding information to game the UAE suit. The Al Khattiya side had hinted that Jag Laadki’s owners wanted the papers so they could use them improperly elsewhere. The judge found these suggestions unhelpful and said they did not assist the real issue. The real issue was simply whether the information was reasonably required for a fair decision on the stay application (the forum choice). On that, he concluded that most of the early disclosure requested was not needed to decide where the case should be heard.
But there was one very important exception. In witness statements filed by Al Khattiya’s side, they had already referred to the long-term charter. One statement said Al Khattiya was on a 25-year time charter to Qatargas at about USD 89,738 per day. Another statement spoke of the long-term time charter to Qatar Liquefied Gas Co. Limited. Because the charter had been specifically referred to in the evidence, a court rule—CPR 31.14(1)(b)—kicked in. That rule says that if a document is mentioned in a statement of case or witness statement, the other side can ask to inspect it. This is a fairness rule: if you rely on or explicitly mention a particular document, you cannot keep it secret. Here, the judge said it was “vanishingly unlikely” that a 25-year charter would be anything other than a written document, and anyone in shipping would understand that the references were to a specific charter party. So inspection was appropriate.
Al Khattiya’s owners tried to soften this by offering a heavily redacted copy—something like showing only the parties’ names and hiding the rest. The judge said that was plainly not good enough. If the claim includes loss of hire and other items tied to the charter, the charter’s terms matter in obvious ways. If the forum issue is being fought now and the charter has already been put into play by the claimants’ own words, then the sensible, fair step is to let the other side see it properly. He also dealt with confidentiality safely by ordering that the disclosure would carry the normal protections under CPR 31.22(1) and adding a protective order under CPR 31.22(2). That means the document can only be used for the English proceedings unless the court allows otherwise, which reduces the risk of misuse.
It is worth noticing the careful balance here. The judge did not order a data dump. He did not force early delivery of invoices, yard quotes, day-by-day loss calculations, or other supporting materials that the Jag Laadki side wanted right away. He said those were not reasonably necessary just to decide the forum. But he did order the one thing that fairness clearly required because the claimants themselves had already pointed to it: the charter party.
This approach also kept the law neat. The judge reminded everyone that forum decisions rest on connecting factors and on whether the foreign court is distinctly more suitable. Details like exact repair costs are for the merits stage. If the case stays in England, those details can be disclosed and argued then. If the case goes to the UAE, the UAE court can handle them. Either way, the early-stage job is to choose the right venue, not to try the whole damages case in advance.
So how did the story end at this stage? The application by Jag Laadki’s owners largely failed. The court rejected most of their demands for early information and documents. But it granted one key order: Al Khattiya’s owners must provide a copy of the long-term charter for inspection under CPR 31.14(1)(b), with a protective order under CPR 31.22(2) to safeguard confidentiality. Everything else in the early-disclosure request was dismissed. In simple terms, the judge told the parties: “We will decide the forum question without turning this into a full trial. But because you, the claimants, have already relied on your charter in your own evidence, you must show it to the other side.” That was the natural and careful finish to this skirmish: a narrow order to disclose the charter now, and no more, so that the stay application about England versus UAE could go forward fairly, with the full fight over numbers saved for the main event if and when the case reaches the merits.
