Kookmin, however, claimed that it was under no obligation to make the payment, as the bond only covered "rejection of the vessel" and "termination, cancellation or rescission of the contract", not the insolvency of Jinse.

In the Commercial Court, Simon J, in a summary judgment, ruled that the bond did cover Jinse's obligation to repay on insolvency.

He emphasised "all such sums" in paragraph 3, and stated that Kookmin's construction "has the surprising and uncommercial result that the Buyers would not be able to call on the Bond on the happening of the event which would be most likely to require the first class security."

Citing the case of Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd v National Westminster Bank plc [1995] 1 EGLR 97, he accepted the principle that "where the parties have used unambiguous language, the court must apply it", no matter how commercially unreasonable the result.

Various commentators, such as Oliver Gayner and Cathryn Hopkins of Olswang's [3] and Thomas G. Heintzman of McCarthy Tétrault[4] have suggested that parties to such cases may, as a result of this ruling, seek to introduce expert evidence on the precise degree of "commercial reasonableness" that a particular interpretation of a contract would imply.