Guidelines for the Maritime Expert Witness

Technical Editor

John Noble BSc FNI

John has worked in commercial shipping since 1962 when he joined HMS Conway 1962-1964. He served as a deck officer in the British merchant navy, sailing with some traditional shipping lines including Blue Funnel and Palm Line.

After obtaining his Master Mariner’s certificate, John graduated with a Nautical Studies BSc (Honours) from Southampton University in 1977. After a spell as a claims executive with Thomas Miller (the UK P&I Club), John set up the London office of Murray Fenton & Associates Limited in 1980.

Over his career John has attended over 60 major casualties and given evidence at about 70 hearings. Jurisdictions include England (arbitration, County and High Courts), USA (arbitration, County and Federal), Sudan, Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden and the UAE (Dubai).

John currently acts as adviser and mentor to the marine surveying consultancy Constellation Marine Services. He was the technical editor for several Nautical Institute publications: Casualty Management Guidelines (2012) and Guidelines for Collecting Maritime Evidence Volumes 1 and 2 (2016 and 2019).

Contributors and peer reviewers

Charles Baker

Charles is an arbitrator in maritime and international trade disputes, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a full member of the London Maritime Arbitration Arbitrators’ Association (LMAA). He is a qualified solicitor, although retired from practice, an LCIA and ICC arbitrator and a member of the Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitration Panel of Arbitrators.

He is a graduate of Queens’ College, Cambridge University, with an MA in Modern Languages and Law) and a member of the Baltic Exchange.

As a specialist in maritime law he has been involved in disputes under charter parties, bills of lading, shipbuilding contracts and MOA and international trade disputes since qualifying in 1974.

He was previously a partner with Holman Fenwick Willan (1978–1989) having founded HFW’s Paris office (1977–1980), a partner with Herbert Smith (1989–1999) and a partner with Lawrence Graham (1999–2003). He also worked for the North of England P&I Association Ltd between 2003-2009 and has presented numerous papers on maritime law topics in locations including Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Singapore, Tunisia, the UK and the USA.

Michael Collett QC

Michael is a barrister with Twenty Essex in London, specialising in commercial law. His areas of practice include general commercial disputes, international trade, shipping (including charter party, contract of affreightment, bills of lading, shipbuilding, and ship sale and purchase disputes), commodities, conflicts of laws, insurance (including marine insurance and P&I cover), reinsurance, banking, and shareholder disputes.

Michael appears both in court and before a variety of arbitration tribunals. He is registered to appear before the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). He accepts appointments as an arbitrator. Michael has been involved in a number of references under various regimes, including the LCIA and LMAA terms, UNCITRAL rules, and ad hoc. He is a member of the panel of arbitrators of ARIAS (UK), MOOGAS, SCMA and SIAC.

Sir Julian Flaux PC QC

Sir Julian Flaux is Chancellor of the UK’s High Court. He was called to the bar in 1978 and practised at the Commercial Bar 1979-2007 specialising in disputes involving insurance and reinsurance, shipping, international trade and professional negligence. He was appointed a QC in 1994, an Assistant Recorder of the Crown Court in 1997, a Recorder in 2000 and Deputy High Court Judge in 2002.

He was appointed a High Court Judge in May 2007 and was Presiding Judge of the Midland Circuit 2010-2013. He was Judge in Charge of the Commercial Court from July 2014 to December 2015 and President of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission from January to December 2016.

He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in December 2016 and Lead Judge for International Relations in November 2019. In February 2020, he was appointed as the Supervising Lord Justice of the Commercial Court. Sir Julian was appointed Chancellor of the High Court in February 2021.

Captain Keith Hart RD FNI

Keith started his seagoing career in 1973 as a deck cadet with Sir William Reardon Smith & Sons and went on to serve primarily in dry cargo and offshore vessels, reaching the rank of Master in 1984. In 1987 he gained his Extra Master’s Certificate of Competency and a BSc (Hons) in Nautical Studies. He then started his shore-based career as a marine consultant dealing with shipping casualties, salvage and wreck removal, offshore projects and providing expert evidence in court and arbitration cases around the world. Keith is a Fellow of The Nautical Institute, the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a Liveryman and Past Master of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners. He started practising as a maritime arbitrator in 2016 and is an Aspiring Full Member of the London Maritime Arbitrators Association (LMAA).

Nick Haslam AFNI

Nick joined Brookes Bell as Principal Master Mariner in 2019 after 22 years in the marine consultancy industry. Before that he served at sea for 21 years in all ranks up to Master. He has considerable towing and anchor handling experience and previously worked for four years with a salvage company on board salvage tugs. His particular specialisations are in the areas of salvage and wreck removal, towing disputes, offshore operations and salvage arbitration. In 1999 Nick was appointed to the Lloyd’s Salvage Arbitration Branch SCR Panel as Special Casualty Representative (SCR), in 2017 he was appointed as the SCR representative and sits on the SCOPIC Committee at Lloyd’s.

Jack Hatcher AFNI

Jack is a Director of English solicitors Shoreside Law, with a practice in marine, trade, energy and insurance disputes. He primarily acts for ship and yacht owners, charterers, managers, P&I clubs, insurers, banks, brokers, ports and shipyards on a variety of wet and dry shipping matters, with emphasis on the investigation and handling of marine casualties and the related contractual and third party disputes that flow from them. He has particular expertise in shipboard electronic evidence.

Before joining Shoreside Law, Jack served at sea as a deck officer in the merchant navy, spent five years at an International Group P&I club and was also a partner at an international shipping law firm.

Jonathan Lux LLB Hons

Formerly a practising solicitor (1975-2012), Jonathan was the joint head of the arbitration and mediation group at Ince & Co. After 37 years at the firm, Jonathan decided to specialise independently in mediation and arbitration; he was subsequently called to the Bar and joined Chambers in 2013.

Jonathan is fully accredited by, and a member of, the International Mediation Institute (IMI) and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. He holds the IMI diploma in cross-cultural competence and therefore has a particular understanding of the cultural aspects of commercial disputes across a range of jurisdictions. He has written widely on mediation, ADR and commercial disputes, and is regularly asked to speak and/or moderate sessions on dispute resolution issues at conferences worldwide.

Jonathan served as a UK National Mediation Awards judge (2018) and mediator (2020). He lectures on the LLM course on international commercial arbitration at Nottingham University. He studied on the Harvard University advanced course on mediating complex international commercial disputes. He is a fluent French and German speaker, making him much in demand for international mediations.

In 2018 Jonathan set up Lux Mediation, offering a wide range of dispute resolution services including mediation, co-mediation, early resolution, early neutral evaluation and arbitration.

Sara Masters QC

Sara is a barrister with Twenty Essex in London, specialising in all areas of commercial law. She has extensive experience in jurisdictional disputes, including jurisdictional issues in arbitration and private international law. Sara also has expertise in shipping (including shipbuilding and ship sale disputes), energy, insurance and reinsurance, commodities, construction, civil fraud and EU law, particularly competition law.

She regularly appears as counsel in international commercial arbitrations both In the UK and abroad before the major international arbitral institutions, and also before tradespecific bodies. Her arbitrations have covered areas such as shipping and commodities, shipbuilding, super yachts, joint production oil agreements, offshore construction, gas supply agreements, share purchase agreements and licensing. Sara has appeared in the High Court, Competition Appeal Tribunal, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and Privy Council and before the European Court of Justice and Dubai International Financial Centre Courts. She is also registered to appear before the Singapore International Commercial Court.

She accepts appointments as an arbitrator both in the UK and abroad and has wide experience of both ad hoc and institutional arbitrations. Sara is appointed to the panels of arbitrators of the SCMA, CIETAC, SIAC Reserve and MOOGAS. Sara is also a CEDR accredited mediator.

David Pockett FNI CMMar

Following a seagoing career culminating in command, David came ashore, first gaining experience in the offshore industry as a marine warranty surveyor and consultant. In 1979 he co-founded London Offshore Consultants becoming CEO from 1999-2007. He has been a marine consultant for over 40 years with a particular specialisation in casualty investigations and management and was a member of the Panel of Special Casualty Representatives at Lloyd’s, Salvage Arbitration Branch for several years. He is a Chartered Master Mariner.

David has had significant experience giving expert evidence on a variety of disputes including salvage, unsafe berths and ports, seaworthiness and cargo-related issues. He has provided evidence to the Royal Courts of Justice and arbitration tribunals in the UK, Federal and State Courts in the USA, arbitration tribunals in the USA, Federal Court in Canada, High Court in Malaysia, District Court in Israel and Appeal Court in Greece.

Mark Solon

Mark is a solicitor and US Attorney at Law. He is the co-founder of training company Bond Solon. He has organised training and conferences for tens of thousands of expert witnesses. He has written several books and numerous articles dealing with expert evidence, working to improve the standards for expert evidence over the past 30 years.

Mark went on to set up the Expert Witness Institute with Lord Woolf as the first Patron in 1996 and created the annual Bond Solon Expert Witness Conference in in 1994.

His training programmes and instructional packages for expert witnesses deal with written and oral evidence, law and procedure and the skills and knowledge needed, helping to raise standards where they are low. Mark also set up university-certified programmes with Cardiff and Aberdeen Universities to provide independent means of assessing experts’ knowledge and skills.

He has taken the programmes abroad, having set up La Touche Training in Dublin and New Zealand and many experts from other jurisdictions are trained in the UK or abroad.

Sir Nigel Teare

Sir Nigel practised at the Admiralty and Commercial Bar from 1975 until 2006 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1991. In 2006 he was appointed a Judge of the Queen’s Bench Division. In addition to sitting in the Queen’s Bench Division and in the Crown Court he sat in the Admiralty Court and in the Commercial Court. From 2011 he was the Admiralty Judge and from 2017 to 2020 he was the judge in charge of the Commercial Court. He retired from the bench in 2020 and now accepts appointments as an arbitrator.