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  • WhatsApp-enned here?! Salutary lessons when negotiating subjects over social media | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    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.

  • Don’t Stop Me Now: English Letters of Credit and Foreign Law Interference | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    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.

  • Landmark decision by the ECJ on GDPR fines | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    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.

  • EU agrees on framework of AI Act | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    EU agrees on framework of AI Act | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    Last Friday, the European Union reached a provisional agreement on the adoption of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act). With this achievement, the EU has the potential to become a pioneer as the AI Act will be the first comprehensive statutory framework that regulates artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT or Llama.

  • ECJ on the discrimination of part-time employees | ZFZ Postcard Cases

    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.

  • Jody Wood on the Judicial Sale of Ships

    Jody Wood on the Judicial Sale of Ships

    The Beijing Convention provides a framework for the rights and obligations of stakeholders following judicial sale of ships, whether that be by judicial auction or by way of private treaty. The framework increases protection for prospective purchasers of those ships, usually being sold in the context of enforcement of maritime claim proceedings. The clearly stated aim of the Convention is to realise better value for ships sold in distressed circumstances, on the basis that higher prices benefit debtors and creditors alike.

    In this update, we take a look at the main provisions of the Beijing Convention and what they mean for stakeholders in judicial sales of vessels.

    Read the full article here.