Richard M Gunn

Practice Areas

Richard is a leading lawyer in Reed Smith’s Casualty and Admiralty team, advising on collisions, groundings, explosions and salvage, and subsequent contractual disputes.

As well as acting for salvors, owners and underwriters, Richard also acts for various owners and clubs in charterparty disputes, focusing on those of a technical nature such as unsafe port disputes, P&I claims and GA disputes. His work has included a number of claims involving complex containership casualties, logistics, bunker disputes, speed and performance issues, and yachts. He has undertaken reviews of various contracts relating to provision of port services, STS and emergency towage services, wreck removal, Towhire and Towcon, Supplytime and decommissioning.

Richard is the legal advisor to the International Salvage Union (ISU).

Richard has also acted in aviation disputes, providing regulation advice on incident management.

Prior to legal practice, Richard qualified as a master mariner, spending 12 years on a variety of vessel types. He then spent five years ashore operating a fleet of time-chartered bulk carriers. He continues to keep up to date and has undertaken approved courses on ECDIS.