Michael Fisher Email & Phone Number

Michael has over 32 years experience in providing legal services to the maritime and transport industries and their insurers. Michael manages all aspects of contentious and non-contentious maritime and transport law, providing his clients with skilled technical expertise and superior service to help them secure timely and commercially minded solutions to a range of legal and non-legal issues.Michael’s practice has an emphasis on maritime commercial issues such as contracts of carriage, shipbuilding and repair contracts, charterparties, vessel sale and purchase, towage contracts and disputes arising out of the same. After his admission as a solicitor Michael worked in London advising on charterparties and charterparty arbitrations before returning to practice in Australia.On the contentious side, Michael acts for marine hull and liability insurers and other marine interests, and in that role has represented shipowners in many of the highest profile Australian marine incidents in recent years, including the “Pacific Adventurer” and the “Shen Neng 1”. Michael has successfully represented parties in a number of Australia’s leading cases on maritime law issues such as the “La Pampa” (salvage), the “Koumala” (towage liability), and the “SA Fortius” (pilot liability).Michael has acted in arbitration and litigation involving highly technical marine issues concerning cargo handling, wharves and cranes, berth and channel depths, siltation, signals, tugs, ship handling, movement and interaction, and considers himself to have an exceptional grasp of these matters (for a lawyer and non-mariner).Michael brings first-hand experience in media-intense situations, having acted for high profile ship owners implicated in environmental disasters. Michael also understands that immediate and appropriate response to any incident is critical to achieving a favourable outcome for his client and as a result he and the Group are on call to their clients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Listed skills include Insurance Law, Maritime Law, Litigation, Transport Law, and 1 others.