Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
Canadian Maritime Law
William Tetley *
CASES
19. British Columbia Ferry Services Inc v. Canada Transportation Accident Investigation & Safety Board (“TSB”)1
Collision—TSB investigation—refusal to release retrieved data
An ECS (electronic chart system) was recovered from the sunken ferry Queen of the North by the TSB (Transportation Safety Board) and data from the ECS was provided to the ferry owner (BC Ferry Services Inc) under a special agreement permitting the ferry owner to use the data only for its reply to the TSB report. The ferry owner then requested the right to use the data for other purposes, not detrimental to the TSB, but the TSB refused. An application was then made to the BC Court of Appeal.
Decision: The application was unanimously denied.
Held: The ferry owner had originally chosen to obtain the data by an agreement rather than by pursuing “a s 20(2) application” (under the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act 1989). The agreement therefore governed and should be enforced.
Per Hall J: There are also “strong public policy reasons for affording confidentiality to activities of the respondent to facilitate effective investigation of transport accidents”.
20. Canadian Pacific Ry Co v. Boutique Jacob Inc2
International multimodal transport—lack of international multimodal Convention
Boutique Jacob Inc (Boutique) contracted with Defendant Pantainer Ltd (Pantainer) to carry Boutique’s cargo by sea from Hong Kong to Vancouver and then by rail to Montreal. Pantainer then contracted with OOCL to carry out the entire shipment. Finally OOCL contracted with CPR to do the rail carriage. The cargo was damaged during rail carriage. The trial judge noted the permutations and combinations of responsibility that may arise
* CM, QC Professor of Law, McGill University; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Maritime and Commercial Law, Tulane University; Counsel to Langlois Kronström Desjardins of Quebec City and Montreal, Canada (email: william.tetley@mcgill.ca). The author is indebted to Robert C Wilkins and to Mariya Azbel, attorney, as well as Mark AM Gauthier, General Counsel, Maritime Law Secretariat, Transport Canada Legal Services, Department of Justice of Canada, for their assistance in the preparation and correction of the text. In addition, he greatly acknowledges the assistance of the Wainright Fund and of the McGill Law Faculty, in particular Dean Nicholas Kasirer, who has stuck by his 82-year-old former maritime law teacher, through thick and thin.
1. 2008 BCCA 40 (BCCA; Lowry J, Frankel J, Hall J).
2. 2008 FCA 85; 2008 AMC 1638 (Can FC).
CANADIAN MARITIME LAW
15