Richard Gunn

Partner and Master Mariner at Reed Smith

Speaker

Richard is a leading lawyer in the Reed Smith Casualty and Admiralty team and has been involved in most of the firm’s casualty work, particularly collisions, groundings, explosions and salvage, and subsequent contractual disputes. As well as acting for salvors, owners and underwriters, he also acts for various owners and clubs in charterparty disputes, focusing on those of a technical nature such as unsafe port disputes, P&I claims and GA disputes.

His work has included a number of claims involving complex containership casualties, logistics, bunker disputes, speed and performance issues, and yachts. He has undertaken reviews of various contracts relating to provision of port services, STS and emergency towage services, wreck removal, Towhire and Towcon, Supplytime and decommissioning.

His reported cases include judgements from all commercial courts up to and including the Supreme Court on maters as diverse as speed and performance through to clarification of the law relating to passage planning and seaworthiness.

He is the legal advisor to the International Salvage Union (ISU) and is a member of the BIMCO drafting committee for their suite of Wreck Contracts.

Prior to legal practice, Richard qualified as a master mariner, spending 12 years on a variety of vessel types. He then spent five years ashore operating a fleet of time chartered bulk carriers.