A Vietnamese insurance company has failed to escape an $8.4m claim for the loss of a floating dock which sank during a tropical storm while being towed from Vladivostok to Vung Tau Shipbuilding’s yard in 2006.
The insurers made serious allegations of fraud but the owner insisted the dock was lost as a result of perils of the sea during tropical storm Bilis which produced wind speeds of 33 metres a second or more than 70 miles an hour with wave heights of 10 metres.
Vietnam’s Baominh Insurance Corp claimed the dock was unseaworthy at the time it left Vladivostok, that there was non-disclosure that entitled it to avoid the claim and several of the documents produced during the trial...
