Our partner Ryoichi Kasahara delivered a presentation at 242nd meeting of Kutsuna Study Group on Maritime Law (*) held on 3 July 2025 to address a recent UK Supreme Court judgment, RTI Ltd v MUR Shipping BV [2024] UKSC 18. This judgment deals with a case where a COA governed by English law provides for freight in USD; Payment of freight in USD became difficult by operation of US sanction law due to the status of Charterers; the claimant Owners refused to accept an offer of payment in Euro by the defendant Charterers, alleging the operation of Force Majeure provisions under the Contract; and the issue was whether such refusal was justified. This is an important judgment that clarified the general constructions of Force Majeure provisions under English law. After Mr. Kasahara’s presentation, he received many inspiring questions and made fruitful discussions with attendees.
*Kutsuna Study Group on Maritime Law is a workshop whose membership includes many maritime lawyers and business/legal persons from shipping companies and marine insurance companies in Japan. This was established in 1990 under the leadership of the late Mr. Takaharu Kutsuna, who was a celebrated maritime lawyer at that time. They held regular meetings and published two collections of contributed articles, ‘Legal Issues of International Commercial and Maritime Law’ in September 1998 and ‘Legal Issues of International Commercial and Maritime Law II’ in July 2011. After temporary interruption when Mr. Kutsuna passed away in 2016, the workshops have continued to be held from time to time until now with great efforts of current coordinators. Our partner Akiyoshi Ikeyama had formerly acted as the coordinator for a long time. He and another partner Narabu Ito also made presentations in several meetings in the past.