Tan Hui Ling

On the court record

Tan Hui Ling appears in the reported corpus as an admiralty and shipping litigator, a distinct specialism among the reported matters at the High Court. Her marine-insurance work is visible in an admiralty in personam action where an insurer had repudiated liability under a marine hull and machinery policy issued in respect of the plaintiff's vessel, the questions being whether the loss of the vessel was proximately caused by fire — an insured peril under the policy — and whether there was wilful misconduct. Her cargo work appears in a claim by the consignee of cargo carried on the defendant's vessel and damaged during the voyage by a typhoon, raising whether the carrier had breached its contractual and bailment duties to ensure the safe carriage of the cargo and the conduct of the master.

Her reported work also engages the arrest of ships and the security that attends it. In an admiralty matter she was engaged on an application to set aside a warrant of arrest, where the issues were whether a bareboat charterparty had been terminated, whether the plaintiffs had a right to possession of the vessel, and whether their control over the charterer conferred a proprietary interest in it, under Order 70 rule 4(6)(b) of the Rules of Court 2012. She also appeared in interlocutory applications arising from ship-arrest proceedings — to strike out affidavits filed on behalf of a proposed intervener, and on an intervener's contention that a plaintiff's refusal to accept the security offered was wrongful and unreasonable under Order 70 rule 33. Across these reported decisions her work is concentrated in the specialist field of admiralty — marine insurance, cargo claims, the arrest of vessels and the security for their release — marking Tan Hui Ling as counsel with a clear focus on shipping litigation.