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Russell Ridley & Co recover £4.9m for Maersk Oil. The High Court's decision on the case of Maersk Oil UK Limited v Dresser-Rand (UK) Limited [2007] All ER (D) 153 was a resounding success for Maersk Oil. We acted for the Claimants Maersk Oil, for whom we have recovered some £4.9M in damages, interest, costs and interest on costs. Dresser Rand's solicitors declared to the Court that they had billed Dresser Rand some £2,700,000.00 in defending this claim.
Facts Maersk bought a defective gas compression package from Dresser-Rand for its Janice A platform in the North Sea. The result was substantial expense associated with the package. Maersk complained to Dresser-Rand and with our assistance made strenuous efforts to settle this dispute, which unfortunately came to nought - despite what the judge eventually found to have been our very realistic approach to settlement. The result was a 23 day breach of contract claim. His Honour Judge Wilcox made detailed findings that the package suffered from excessive and harmful vibrations, that the liquid handling was inadequate, that the electric motors were inadequate and that the compressor control provided by Dresser-Rand suffered from shortcomings. Two sentences from the judgment of 4th May 2007 epitomise the case: ''In many significant respects affecting its safety and reliability it [Dresser-Rand's package] was not fit for purpose.'' [paragraph 2]
''At the end of the day this is a case about a package that was not fit for purpose in significant respects and the claimant, KMG [now Maersk], proved this to be the case.'' [paragraph 8]
Comments We acted for Maersk Oil UK Limited. The judge found that they had at all stages been willing to negotiate and made settlement offers on a very realistic basis, but were forced to go to trial to recover full compensation. Reflecting this the judge awarded interest on principal at 7.5% above base rate (itself currently 5.5%), and not only awarded our clients all of their costs, but ordered assessment on the indemnity basis and interest on costs at 5% above base rate. While our efforts on Maersk's behalf to reach a commercial solution were not rewarded by an early settlement, Maersk reaped the benefit of our settlement strategy by additional awards worth several hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Counsel Our Barrister throughout this case was Peter McMaster of Serle Court with additional assistance during the latter stages supplied by Thomas Braithwaite, also of Serle Court: www.serlecourt.co.uk.
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