[Case brief]

For the ship mortgage dispute between Huanghua Subbranch of Bank of Cangzhou Co., Ltd. (“the Huanghua Subbranch”), the enforcement applicant in this case, as a party and Cangzhou Bohai New Area Rongxiang Shipping Co., Ltd. (“Rongxiang Shipping”), Tianjin Rongxiang Logistics Co., Ltd. (“Rongxiang Logistics”), Zhou Sunrong and Zhou Sunyi as the other party, the Court had issued a paper of civil mediation numbered [2017] Jin 72 Min Chu No. 499. However, after that paper became effective, the debtors refused to pay the principal and interest confirmed in the paper of civil mediation, so the Huanghua Subbranch applied for enforcement. During the enforcement, the Court seized the mortgage ship “Rongxiang 1” owned by Rongxiang Shipping. However, in fact Rongxiang Shipping had lost the actual control over the ship, and the ship was possessed and used by a third party by force, which turned off the AIS system on the ship or took other actions to evade from searching and enforcement by court.

[Enforcement result]

During the enforcement, it was found that the “Rongxiang 1” ship was bought collectively by more than 100 villagers in Pingtan, Fujian Province, and was used for operation simply under the name of Rongxiang Shipping. The fishers who contributed to the purchase of the ship possessed the ship by force in order to avoid enforcement of effective legal instrument, and rejected the enforcement of the instrument. On August 10, 2018, after learning that the ship would berth in Jingtang Port for goods loading, the enforcement officers of the Court immediately initiated the ship seizure procedures, continuously worked for five days and nights, properly resolved the problems on the salary of the sailors and the reasonable claims of the contributing fishers, and successfully transferred the ship from Jingtang Port to Tianjin Port, so that a foundation was laid for the successful closing of this case. In the next three months after that, the enforcement officers actively performed in-depth investigation on the case, learned the difficulties of the private enterprises, the concerns of the contributing fishers and the claims of the bank, accurately grasped the point of balance among the interests of the parties concerned, and urged the parties to settle the dispute through reconciliation. At last, with the efforts of the Court, the third party repaid the bank loan on behalf of the debtors, and the private enterprises, the contributing fishers and the third party signed a ship trusteeship agreement to repay the debt by installment with freight, so that the dispute was settled properly. On November 14, 2018, the principal and interest of the underlying loan in this case was fully repaid.

[Significance]

The task of “solving the problem of difficult enforcement” is related to the interests of the people and the sound social and economic development. The year 2018 is the final year of the campaign of “basically solving the problem of difficult enforcement”. With great efforts, courage, confidence and cooperation of the officers, the Court successfully resolved many major, difficult and complicated enforcement cases. During the enforcement of this case, the enforcement judge adhered to the judicial concepts of protecting the rights and interests of the winning party according to law, considering the interests of vulnerable groups and supporting sustainable development of enterprises, persisted in the principle of combination of force and modesty, and successfully resolved the dispute through compromise of the parties concerned after repeated coordination and reconciliation instead of rough procedures, so that the potential damage to the third party arising from auction was avoided, all the rights and interests of the enforcement applicant were quickly realized, the contributing fishers kept their ship, and the private enterprises involved tided over the difficulties. Such practice of the enforcement judge led to a win-win situation among the bank, the enterprises and the fund contributors, achieved organic unification of legal effect and social effect, won acceptance of all the parties concerned, and became a model for handling of similar ship enforcement cases. A special report on this case was made in the CCTV’s documentary entitled Record of Punishment for Bad-faith Parties.