The COVID-19 pandemic has placed immense strain across the whole of the economy and raises the issue of how company directors should balance their obligations to shareholders and creditors while ensuring that they protect themselves from any personal liability.

Companies and their directors in the following sectors of the economy face difficult decisions:

Hanjin Shipping's financial collapse has been well publicised. As a consequence of its collapse one can anticipate that there will be displaced containers worldwide with Hanjin vessels being arrested short of or at destination, being moored up or remaining outside port limits to avoid arrest or being stuck at a port short of destination with the port authority unwilling to provide port services absent payment in advance. One press report we have seen suggests that in excess of 500,000 TEUs already loaded on Hanjin vessels may be subject to delay.

In Berryman v Zurich Australia Ltd [2016] WASC 196 it was decided that a bankrupt's entitlement to claim a TPD benefit under a life insurance policy is not an entitlement that is divisible amongst the bankrupt's creditors, and therefore such an entitlement does not vest in the Official Trustee in bankruptcy. Tottle J of the Supreme Court of Western Australia ruled that the bankrupt insured could continue an action in his own name to recover the TPD benefit. Life insurers may need to adjust their claims' payment practices in light of the Berryman decision.