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London Arbitration 3/24: Time bar still too high a bar for claimants to get over | ZFZ Postcard Cases
London Arbitration 3/24 concerned a voyage concluded under a booking note dated 5 October 2021. As readers will be aware, a booking note is issued to a shipper who books space for cargo onboard a ship. In Electrosteel Castings v Scan-Trans Shipping and Chartering, Gross J stated a booking note is intended to “embody the contract” agreed between the parties and “to continue in existence as the contract between them.”[i] This position is supported by the terms specified in the widely used CONLINEBOOKING note which states “[i]t is hereby agreed that this Contract shall be performed subject to the terms contained on Page 1 and 2 hereof which shall prevail over any previous arrangements …”.[ii]
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EU Parliament adopted AI Act | ZFZ Postcard Cases
On 13 March 2024, after three years of negotiations, the European Parliament finally adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the first comprehensive statutory framework worldwide that regulates artificial intelligence systems.
A provisional agreement on the adoption of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) has already been reached in December 2023. Now, the AI Act has been formally passed by the European Parliament.
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WhatsApp-enned here?! Salutary lessons when negotiating subjects over social media | ZFZ Postcard Cases
When emails became popular in business in the 1990’s, to a large extent replacing faxes and letters by post, it was difficult to foresee how things could get any quicker. However, with the advent of social media into the fast-paced world of broking, and the arrival of WhatsApp, communication by email, it seemed, was just too slow.
WhatsApp messages are now regularly used for the negotiation of charterparties. However, the difficulties start when the charterparty falls apart. As many times as one party produces the messages as evidence of the contract, the other party argues that they are merely informal or unverifiable communications that should be given no value by a court or tribunal in considering contract formation.
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Don’t Stop Me Now: English Letters of Credit and Foreign Law Interference | ZFZ Postcard Cases
Every now and then a commodities trade goes horribly wrong, the parties fall out and someone rings their lawyer to ask: ‘can we stop the letter of credit?’. Injunctions to stop letters of credit are rare as hens teeth in England or the US but more common in other jurisdictions, where civil law systems allow greater latitude.
The Commercial Court’s decision in Macquarie Bank Limited v Banque Cantonale Vaudoise [2024] EWHC 114 (Comm) sets out in crystal clear terms the English law view on attempts to do so and the enduring liability of the issuing bank.
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Landmark decision by the ECJ on GDPR fines | ZFZ Postcard Cases
In a long-awaited decision, the ECJ made two important clarifications regarding the conditions under which companies can be sanctioned under the GDPR.
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ECJ on the discrimination of part-time employees | ZFZ Postcard Cases
A payment scheme, which provides for extra payments above a certain number of normal working hours discriminates against part-time employees pursuant to recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling.
Based on the applicable collective bargaining agreement, German Lufthansa paid its employees additional remuneration once they had reached a certain number of flight service hours during their normal working hours.Read More »