A US judge has refused to issue a judgment before trial in a case seeking to answer a humdinger of a legal question: Can a shipowner recover a salvage award if a helicopter uses its vessel for an emergency landing?
US District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, of the federal court in New Orleans, denied a request from helicopter operator PHI to declare that an affiliate of Greece’s Ocean Freighters cannot recover a salvage award after the helicopter landed on the 80,700-dwt bulker Aeolian Heritage (built 2011) in March 2013.
Ocean
