Simon Kverndal
Maritime lawyer who defended activists from Greenpeace
SIMON KVERNDAL, who has died aged 62, was a “wet shipper” – an Admiralty lawyer, one of only a few practising under UK law, with broad interests in sport and the arts.
When the multi-millionpound Borealis v Stargas case came to the House of Lords in 2001, it provided a rare glimpse into the work of shipping barristers like Kverndal. The case turned on a dispute between the owners and buyers of a contaminated cargo of liquid gas carried in the MV Berge Sisar from Saudi Arabia to Sweden: after claims, cross-claims and counterclaims regarding the cargo and the ship, the costs were substantial.
Called to the Bar in 1982, Kverndal was a member of Quadrant chambers, which grew from about a dozen barristers to almost 70 today. Specialising in maritime law, he became a “wet shipper”.
Most of his cases, involving shipowners, cargoes, casualties at sea, collisions and salvage, were resolved by arbitration and rarely came into the public eye.
Only occasionally did Kverndal step into the limelight, as he did when he acted for the widow of a man who drowned after falling from the Stena ferry Koningin Beatrix in the Irish Sea and succeeded, against the expectations of his peers, in winning damages for her; or when he took on, pro bono, the defence of Greenpeace activists who had boarded and chained themselves to MV Etoile, which they suspected of carrying genetically modified grain into Cardiff.
Taking silk in 2002, he also lent his time and expertise to the London Shipping Law Centre and to Lloyd’s Salvage Working party, as well as to sporting organisations, clubs and his local church.
Simon Richard Kverndal was born on April 22 1958; his family had settled in England in the 19th century, but he maintained his Norwegian roots, and most summers he went to the lakeside cabin in Norway which he shared with his Norwegian cousins.
Educated at Haileybury, where he showed a range of acting skills, from Tilburnia, parody of a doomed heroine in Sheridan’s The Critic, to the evil Mosca in Jonson’s Volpone. He read History at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he showed his financial acumen by buying a house and letting rooms.
Kverndal blossomed while attending the John Hall Venice Course which introduced him to Italian arts and the language.
Afterwards, for many years he held a season ticket in the front row of the upper circle of the London Coliseum, where he was spellbound by English National Opera productions of, among others, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and learnt to love the works of Leos Janacek.
He was a member of the Hawks’ sporting club at Cambridge; Queens; Mjolnirs, part of the Tennis and Rackets Association; Jesters squash club; and MCC. He captained the Cambridge real tennis team and, when over 40, played in the British Amateur Rackets Championship.
He was a benefactor of the Tennis and Rackets Association and latterly chairman of its amateur status committee. He seemed to have an endless supply of tickets to sporting events which he generously gave to younger colleagues.
To his blue for real tennis he had added a half-blue for wine-tasting, and he served on the wine committees of the Garrick, the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and the Middle Temple. All were opportunities to charm with his talent for friendship, bonhomie, and conversation.
Everything he did was marked for his zest for life: he made his own yogurt and bread, loved entertaining, and bore more than two years of illness with discretion and cheerfulness: until very recently, he kept his illness secret from all but a few intimates.
Kverndal married Sophie Rowsell in 1997; she survives him with their two sons, Thor and Finn.
Simon Kverndal, born April 22 1958, died June 14 2020