While anonymising a written statement, one judge peppered the text with Star Wars references accidentally bringing to mind some interstellar smuggling adventure.
A Singaporean judge, Vinodh Coomaraswamy, who is obviously a big Star Wars fan has anonymised his reasons for dismissing an application to reject a tribunal’s decision by inserting various names and locations from the popular sci-fi movie series.
The plaintiff was described as operating out of a country called Alderaan while the defendant was allegedly located in Cloud City, a province of Bespin. The stage is thus set for a dispute of galactic proportions.
Also involved was an oil trader referred to as Owen and a finance manager referred to as Beru – who long-term fans will recognise as Luke Skywalker’s uncle and aunt from the original trilogy.
Finally, Vinodh made reference to a vessel used by the plaintiff to ship crude oil to the defendant which went under the alias, Tantive IV – the ship Leia is captured in at the beginning of Episode IV.
This made for some highly entertaining content throughout the judge’s written statement.
“Finally, [the plaintiff] chartered and nominated a vessel, which I shall call the “Tantive IV”, to transport the Dar Blend from South Sudan to up to three safe ports including Alderaan and Cloud City,” Vinodh wrote in one paragraph.
“Owen proceeded to load the Dar Blend onto the Tantive IV at Port Sudan on 17 and 18 December 2010. However, Owen did not instruct the Tantive IV to sail directly from Port Sudan to Cloud City. Instead, he instructed the vessel to sail from Port Sudan to Alderaan and to remain in Alderaan awaiting further routing orders,” he wrote in another.
It all sounds as though it might be related to Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon during his smuggling days in the original trilogy. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get to watch this tale unfold when the Force Awakens is finally released next month!
