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Navigating Your Lease Through a Sea of Liens
Equipment lenders and lessors face specialized issues when the asset is a vessel. How is the lender secured in its collateral? Can a lessor be secured in a vessel titled in lessor's name? How does a lessor perfect its security interest in the vessel? Where does the lessor stand in relation to competing creditors? This article addresses these questions within the U.S. legal system and describes proposed legislation to expand opportunities for lease financing of vessels.
Creditors who rely on vessels to secure debt must be concerned with the legal environment in which the vessels operate. For centuries, if not millennia, a vessel has been regarded as a separate legal entity apart from its owner. The vessel can incur debts and obligations independent of its owner. In the United States, when a supplier provides fuel (known as 'bunkers') to a vessel, the vessel itself is liable for payment. By operation of U.S. admiralty law, the supplier has a maritime lien against the vessel to secure payment. The same is true for repair yards, stevedores, the master and crew, and other providers of goods and services directly to the vessel. If the vessel causes harm, the injured party may have a maritime tort lien against the vessel to secure its claim. A maritime lien claimant may bring an action against the vessel without suing or even bringing a claim against the owner. Modern federal law has long incorporated, and often refined, these historic maritime lien concepts. Today they are reflected in the provisions of 46 U.S.C. Chapter 313 and an extensive body of U.S. case law.
The 'Preferred Maritime Lien' and Preferred Mortgage
Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Anti-Assignment Override Provisions
UCC Sections 9406(d) and 9408(a) are one of the most powerful, yet least understood, sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. On their face, they appear to override anti-assignment provisions in agreements that would limit the grant of a security interest. But do these sections really work?