Chris Hart 17 September 2019 Chris is Of Counsel at the Houston office of international law firm HFW. His practice focuses on shipping, marine, and energy companies, including litigation and commercial transactions. He is an experienced trial lawyer, resolving disputes in federal and state courts and in arbitration. He advises clients in transactions involving charter parties, maritime contracts, offshore energy and master service agreements, and infrastructure projects with maritime law concerns. Chris also advises on regulatory compliance, including Jones Act coastwise trade and shipping regulations. Chris has over 25 years of experience with charter parties, sale of goods and transport contracts, maritime liens, ship arrests and maritime attachment remedies, shipping casualties, bunker and cargo disputes, marine pollution, and many issues in the shipping industry. In the energy sector, Chris has experience in upstream and midstream commercial disputes and casualties, onshore and offshore. He has been a speaker and author on topics including bunker contracts, OSV charter parties, coastwise trade laws, offshore drilling, and many maritime law issues. Before practicing law, Chris sailed as a professional mariner on chemical tanker, crude oil tanker, and general cargo ships.
Paul Dean 20 December 2019 Paul is Global Head of Shipping at HFW managing 200 specialist shipping lawyers across a worldwide network of 20 offices. Paul specialises in offshore and marine, focusing mainly on charter parties, bills of lading, shipbuilding, rig disputes, collisions, fire and explosion, salvage, general average, groundings, total loss, towage, seismic and limitation. He regularly speaks at and chairs offshore vessel conferences and has been on the BIMCO panel for their “Using SUPPLYTIME” course for over 10 years, the review committee for the SUPPLYTIME 2005 revision and on the drafting committee for BIMCO’s new standard form Offshore Dismantling Services Agreement DISMANTLECON. Experience gained working for an International Group P&I club specialising in offshore vessels, enables Paul to combine practical understanding with the legal role. Paul is identified in the Legal Directories as one of the leading individuals in his fields and in 2019 was elected by Lloyd's List as one of the top 10 maritime lawyers and one of the 100 most influential people in the maritime industry. Paul has also contributed to the two most recent editions of “The Law Of Tug and Tow and Offshore Contracts” by Simon Rainey Q.C. – “...Paul Dean of HFW, one of the leading and busiest practitioners in the field of offshore contracts and a veritable guru on the topic of the BIMCO forms, particularly "Supplytime", who as before very kindly gave me the benefit of his great experience and practical insights and with whom once again I have had the great good fortune to work on a host of tricky problems on the various BIMCO forms".
Tom Adams 22 August 2019 Tom is a shipping and energy specialist with particular expertise in dispute resolution and negotiating contracts relating to offshore construction, shipbuilding, drilling and floating production. He litigates disputes for offshore contractors, drilling contractors and shipyards as well as negotiates shipbuilding contracts, offshore drilling contracts and long term charter contracts of specialist vessels and FPSOs. Tom has particular expertise in advising contractors in relation to payment security mechanisms during operations in difficult jurisdictions and disputes with sub-contractors and suppliers. Tom has presented for IBC in relation to FPSO contracts covering design risk, variations, topside integration and commissioning issues. He has also presented for BIMCO and Lloyds Maritime Academy on the SUPPLYTIME forms.
