The owner of the Ever Given, the cargo ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week, hampering global trade and roiling markets, expects to be hit with "many hundreds or thousands” of legal claims.

The scale of future litigation against the vessel’s owners was laid bare at a London court hearing Tuesday, where lawyers won a court order to put any potential claims on hold for two months. Two subsidiaries of Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., the container vessels’ owner, and Evergreen Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate that operated it under a long-term charter, had asked a London judge for the stay.

Earlier this year, they obtained another order limiting some claims against the ship to £84 million ($116 million).