Looking at Sister Ship and Associated Ship arrest
The arrest of vessel is a powerful legal weapon that is used to secure appearance of ship owners in maritime proceedings. Once a vessel is seized, the court maintains possession of the vessel and the owner loses all control. Securing the arrest of a vessel does not depend on showing an arguable claim or satisfying the court that any judgment to be awarded to the claimant eventually may not be met. All that is required is to show a strong prima facie claim that is enforceable by an action.
As a result of the fact that sister ship arrest forestalls ship owners or offending ships from escaping, ship owners devised new tactics to circumvent the sister ship concept. In recent times ship owners register their vessels in the name of different companies thereby making it very difficult for sister ship owned by the same person to be arrested, since it is owned by different corporate entities. In order to tackle this challenge, the South African Admiralty Jurisdiction Regulation uses the associated ship concept, whereby the ship-arrest provision was introduced into South African legislation as an extension of the English sister ship provisions.
The South African provisions permit piercing of the corporate veil. In this respect a vessel owned by a different company from the company which owns the ship concerned is susceptible to arrest simply by virtue of the fact that the two companies are commonly controlled or owned. Ships are associated so long as there is common shareholding in the owning companies and any arrest affected on any of such ship is valid in South Africa. The proactive legislation to lift the corporate veil, in order to expose the disguise by ship owners, makes the Admiralty Jurisdiction Regulation Act of 1983 of South Africa unique.
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