About Taco van der Valk
Taco van der Valk is a lawyer at AKD who specialises in international trade (non-consumer sale, international payments) and the carriage of goods and persons.
His main focus is on contractual matters (charter parties, bills of lading, (sea) waybills) and on transnational litigation (arbitration, arrest of vessels and aircraft, limitation of liability of shipowners, insolvency, ships’ auctions).
Within AKD's Transport & Trade practice group, Taco is responsible for the group's knowledge management, including the continuation of professor Schadee's know-how system.
Another area of expertise is arbitration. Taco regularly is called upon to act as arbitrator (ad hoc, Unum, FENEX) and to handle matters relating to the execution or setting aside of arbitral awards. A founding councillor of the Dutch Arbitration Association (DAA), he currently sits on the advisory board of the Netherlands Arbitration Institute (NAI).
Taco is also a deputy justice at the 's-Hertogenbosch Court of Appeal (Trade Division) and the chairman of the Dutch Transport Law Association (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Vervoerrecht).
A former board member of the Comité Maritime International (CMI), Taco acted as secretary of the working group in charge of drafting the York-Antwerp Rules 2016 and the Guidelines on General Average.
In addition, Taco was the secretary to the board of editors of the Dutch maritime and transport law journal, Schip en Schade, for almost twenty years. At the moment, he is the correspondent for the Netherlands of the CML CMI Database of Judicial Decisions on International Maritime Conventions. This Database is managed by the National University of Singapore, at which Taco serves as Adjunct External Fellow.