John Ac Cartner News

Prominent UK and US maritime lawyer and maritime author Dr John A.C. Cartner is calling on the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to enact changes to the Safety at Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) to combat the continuing problem of piracy facing the global merchant fleet by allowing ships to carry armed guards. Piracy is a growing phenomenon with 1,181 seafarers captured and eight killed in 2010. According to Dr Cartner, managing member of Washington-based law firm Cartner & Fiske LLC, under SOLAS and other laws it is a ship master’s doctrinal duty to protect the lives of those aboard his ship, but that he may not currently lawfully do this with private armed guards.

Tara Leiter, an attorney at Blank Rome LLP, collaborated with John A.C. Cartner (United States Coast Guard shipmaster and lawyer) and Richard P. Fiske (retired U.S. naval captain and attorney with John Cartner at Cartner & Fiske LLC) to author the recently released legal treatise The International Law of the Shipmaster. Released in the IMO’s declared Year of the Seafarer, the book is designed to identify and explain the complexity of the legal position faced daily by today’s shipmasters…