The Marion 1 is the first case since the Lennard 2 case of 1915 in which the House of Lords has given articulate guidance on the principles applicable to the shipowner’s right, under the Merchant Shipping Acts 1894–1984, to limit his liability to an amount calculated by reference to the tonnage of the vessel where the occurrence takes place without his actual fault or privity. Other decisions of the House and of the Privy Council since that time3 have not gone much beyond the facts. It therefore sets the current attitude of the English courts to the right to limit, and that attitude may be said to be a somewhat hostile one.

The Marion dropped anchor near Hartlepool and fouled a submerged oil pipeline, causing damage, claims in respect of which exceeded U.S. $25,000,000. The owners sought to limit their liability to $982,292.06 by virtue of the Merchant Shipping Acts. The incident occurred because the master was using an out-of-date and uncorrected chart which did not mark the pipeline. He had on board a more recent chart which did, but was not using it: indeed, he subsequently took the ship into Hartlepool and when he left he was still using the out-of-date chart. Since the ship was in fact correctly equipped in this respect, the owners’ fault or privity, if such there was, consisted in their failure to maintain effective supervision. This was said to manifest itself broadly in two ways: failure to operate a proper system for keeping the charts on board up to date, whether by replacement or correction; and failure by the managing director to ensure that a marine inspectorate report, referring to the unsatisfactory state of the ship’s charts, was brought to his attention while he was absent for considerable periods in Greece. The owners were held not entitled to limit.

In one sense the decision can be regarded as a natural prolongation, or even application, of existing English case-law, some of which gets very close to this situation4. In another sense, this is not so. The right to limit seems to have arisen for the simple reason that shipowners argued that their potential liabilities were too wide and should be restricted in the interests of effective commerce5. Most of the earlier cases in which the owners were held unable to limit were concerned with the fault of the owners leading to the ship itself or its tackle being unsafe in some way6. The assumption seems to have been that shipowners discharged their other responsibilities by appointing a competent master and leaving navigation (including the provision of