Case Nos: CL-2023-000206 and CL-2023-000207 - [2025] EWHC 1591 (Comm)

For Charterers Aditya Garware and Steven Lambertus Seevinck were called.

Mr Garware remains a director of Guarantors and was a director of Charterers for the relevant period. He also appears to have been a director of Arena for the relevant period.

Mr Garware was an honest witness whose evidence could, for the most part, be relied upon. However, on occasion his evidence was inconsistent with itself, and with the Defendants’ own pleaded case. Moreover, his evidence as to the import of communications between the parties could only be of limited value, in light of the objective nature of the exercise of ascertaining whether a contract has been entered into.

The core thrust of Mr Garware’s evidence was to the effect that an agreement had been arrived at in late 2019 ‘to cancel all the bareboat charterparty agreements, the guarantees, et cetera’. This agreement was ‘based first on that conversation which was minuted in the board meeting [i.e. the board meeting of the Guarantors on 6 August 2019] and thereafter, I believe, in emails’. This is not consistent with the Defendants’ case that the General Agreement was entered into by conduct in 2016. I also regard it as difficult to reconcile with Mr Garware’s admission that any agreement was only in principle, although he did emphasise that he nonetheless considered it binding.

Mr Seevinck was a director of Charterers throughout the relevant period and remains so to this day. He was a knowledgeable witness but reluctant to make any concessions even when they would have been appropriate. His evidence was principally to the effect that an agreement to end the Charterparties, and release Charterers from any obligations under them, had been reached orally in 2016. This was inconsistent with Charterers’ pleaded case, and also with the documentary evidence. I did not regard this evidence as reliable.