Comment and analysis by Reed Smith lawyers on the latest developments in the shipping industry
Hapag-Lloyd AG v. Skyros Maritime Corporation and Agios Minas Shipping Company [2024] EWHC 3139 (Comm)
In a significant new case, the UK Commercial Court assessed damages following late redelivery of two vessels under time charterparties where, pursuant to the terms of MOAs signed with third party buyers for their sale, Owners could not charter the…
This case illustrates the complex relationship that can exist between proceedings brought against two different sea carriers arising out of the same event. French Courts addressed the following question: how can judgments issued in one of the proceedings be used in the other proceedings? Ultimately, the handling of circular recourses between cargo interests, sea carriers and stevedore companies depends on the interpretation of privity of contract and res judicata.Continue Reading One event, two legal realities! Successful outcome for Reed Smith’s Paris shipping team in major cargo claim dispute
This article was originally published on Lloyd’s Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly and is republished with permission.
In the latest of our series, which is annually published in the Lloyds Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly Yearbook, Andrew Tetley and Antoine Guillemot have collated and reported on developments in French shipping law.
Trading companies that seek to insulate their shipping risk by allocating their chartering activities to a separate entity will be reassured by a recent judgment of the English Court, in which it was decided that a letter of indemnity was enforceable only against the entity which had issued it, and not against a connected entity (or their exporter clients) as supposed undisclosed principals.Continue Reading Keeping Risk at Arm’s Length – The Xing Zhi Hai [2024] EWHC 2371 (Comm)
Despite living in an age of instantaneous correspondence and fast contractual negotiations, parties may still assume that promises as important as parent company guarantees, require detailed written documents, wet-ink, or e-signature signatures in order to be enforceable. The English Courts have recently reaffirmed that this is not the case.
SFL Ace 2 Co Inc v DCW Management Ltd (formerly Allseas Global Management Ltd) (the “M/V Green Ace”)Continue Reading The importance of email sign offs: the formalities of executing a parent company guarantee under the Statute of Frauds 1677
The question of whether demurrage liquidates all or just some of the damages arising from a charterer’s breach in failing to complete cargo operations within the laytime will no longer be decided by the UK Supreme Court following a commercial settlement. The parties have therefore consented to the appeal not proceeding.Continue Reading The Eternal Bliss – Court of Appeal has the final say
Can Charterers withhold hire without Owners’ consent, even if the vessel was off hire on the hire due date and where they had agreed deductions from hire would not be allowed without Owners’ written agreement?
Key facts
Under a charterparty dated 13 April 2021 on a heavily amended NYPE 1993 form, Bulk Trident Shipping Ltd (”Owners”) trip time chartered the “Anna Dorothea” (the “Vessel”) to Fastfreight Pte Ltd (“Charterers”) for the carriage of a bulk cargo from East Coast, India to China (the “Charterparty”).Continue Reading To have and to (with)hold – Fastfreight Pte Ltd v Bulk Trident Shipping Ltd [2023] EWHC 105 (Comm) The “Anna Dorothea”
There have been several decisions in 2022 about carrier’s defences to misdelivery claims under bills of lading.
Carriers face misdelivery claims when they deliver cargo without production of original bills of lading, but then someone else claiming to be the ‘lawful holder’ of the bills complains the cargo should have been delivered to them instead. A common scenario is where a bank has financed the import of a cargo, but the finance has not been repaid. The bank then looks to the bills of lading it holds as a form of security. Unfortunately, the bank often finds the financed cargo has already been discharged from the ship (usually under a letter of indemnity) and cannot be traced. The bank finds it has no security for its claim against its defaulting customer, and brings a claim against the carrier for misdelivery under the bills of lading, arguing the carrier should not have discharged the cargo without the production of the original bills of lading. The carrier in turn looks to the letter of indemnity under which it agreed to discharge the cargo without the original bills.Continue Reading Misdelivery claims: not an open goal for financing banks
With thanks also to Counsel, Charles Holroyd at 7KBW.
In DHL Project & Chartering Ltd v. Gemini Ocean Shipping Co Ltd 2022-000247 [EWCA], the Court of Appeal, in a judgment upholding the High Court’s judgment of Mr Justice Jacobs, clarified the scope of the separability principle in relation to arbitration clauses in contracts, including the scope of s 7 Arbitration Act 1996.
A “subject” provision in a putative fixture requiring “shipper/receivers approval” was held to be of an unqualified character such that the contract would not become binding unless and until DHL (“Charterers”) lifted the “subject”, which, on the facts, had never occurred. That meant that not only the fixture, but also the arbitration agreement contained therein, was never concluded.Continue Reading Subjects and separability
The question of whether demurrage liquidates all or just some of the damages arising from a charterer’s breach in failing to complete cargo operations within the laytime has divided practitioners and academics for decades and, more recently, the English Court in K Line Pte Ltd v. Priminds Shipping (HK) Co Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1712 (The Eternal Bliss). Now, in granting permission to appeal to the shipowners, it is a question which the Supreme Court has said it will answer.Continue Reading The Eternal Bliss – Permission to appeal granted by the UK Supreme Court
