About Elizabeth
Elizabeth is an associate in the Commodities team in the Hong Kong office. Before joining HFW, Elizabeth received training and had a split practice of wet and dry shipping.
With her experience primarily acting for head owners in wet shipping matters, she is hence familiar with the technical and legal issues that arise from collisions, grounding and allisions, including the law on seaworthiness, negligent navigation and management, GA, limitation and forum non conveniens. Also the more technical aspects of shipping such as passage planning, use of electronic charts, operation of ECDIS, salvage and wreck removal.
Having acted for both owners and charterers in dry shipping matters, she has experience handling disputes arising under time charters in respect of fire in engine rooms and cargo holds, cargo damage arising from handling during rain and lack of ventilation, failure to deliver with clean holds, provision of off-spec bunkers, OFAC sanctions, and issuance of clean bills where mate’s receipts were heavily claused.
Elizabeth also has experience acting for owners in ship management agreement disputes. She frequently handles matters with cross-jurisdictional elements, and has experience dealing with foreign law, such as Korean law, PRC law, US law, Taiwanese law, German law and Norwegian law.
As a native Cantonese speaker, speaking fluent Mandarin and conversational Korean, Elizabeth can read Chinese and Korean ship documents, correspondence and the original text of Chinese and Korean legislation without much need for translation and can effectively communicate with Chinese and Korean lawyers in cases with PRC and Korean law elements.