The High Court has restrained Stena Line Limited from terminating its stevedoring arrangement with Doyle Shipping Group (DSG) while the parties’ dispute proceeds. The order also prevents Stena from transferring contractual obligations or entitlements, stopping payment for work already carried out, removing DSG from its Dublin Port locations, or interfering with its stevedoring work there.
The injunction was granted at the interlocutory stage, pending trial. Mr Justice Brian McGovern said both sides had raised serious questions to be tried, and expressly made no final findings on whether the parties reached a replacement agreement in 2015 or whether Stena could terminate under the 2011 agreement.
Stena gave DSG three months’ notice on 31 August 2017, relying on a clause in the 2011 contract permitting termination without cause. DSG argued that the parties had made an oral agreement at a meeting in Holyhead, Wales, in April 2015, replacing the 2011 terms with an agreement that could be terminated only with cause. Alternatively, it said Stena was estopped from relying on the termination clause because of representations by its agents. Stena denied that a new agreement or such representations existed.
The dispute also involved Stena’s contract with North Quay Associates Limited (NQA) to provide stevedoring services at Dublin Port, due to begin on 1 December 2017. The court noted that the NQA contract had not yet commenced and that Stena had agreed to continue engaging DSG pending the injunction decision. It also said it had not been given the NQA contract’s terms, which limited its assessment of the consequences for Stena.
DSG argued that damages would not adequately address the loss of a long-standing contract that it said was important to its financing, cash flow, other operations and workforce. The judge accepted that damages would be inadequate on grounds beyond the difficulty of calculating some losses. He found that the balance of convenience favoured DSG, citing the parties’ 22-year business relationship, potential effects on DSG employees, and the prospect of having to unravel the NQA arrangement if DSG later succeeded at trial.
The order preserves the position that existed before the purported termination of the 2011 contract. The judgment addresses DSG’s injunction application; Stena’s separate application was “parked” for the time being. The order does not resolve the underlying contract dispute.