Teare J today faced a neat point of interpretation of the ICA. In Transgrain Shipping (Singapore) PTE Ltd v Yangtze Navigation (Hong Kong) Co Ltd [2016] EWHC 3132 (Comm) Transgrain sold soya bean meal to Iranian buyers. To transport it they chartered 45000 grt bulker MV Yangtze Xing Hua on a NYPE time charter trip. The ICA was expressly incorporated. The vessel arrived: the buyers were decidedly leisurely about paying for the cargo or collecting it. Transgrain in response ordered the vessel to wait for four months, it being cheaper to pay hire and/or demurrage (which could then be billed to the buyer) than to warehouse the cargo ashore.
At the end of the period the cargo overheated. The owners settled a cargo claim by the consignees for about € 2.6 million, and then turned on Transgrain. In arbitration proceedings neither Transgrain nor the owners were found to have been at fault; the overheating had been caused, unsurprisingly, by sitting for about 18 weeks off the Iranian coast. As a result Transgrain argued that this was a case of “all other cargo claims” and argued for a 50-50 split under s.8(d) of the ICA. Owners countered that under the proviso to s.8(d) claims caused by the “act or neglect” of one or other party were for that party’s account: Transgrain argued that “act”, yoked as it was to “neglect”, implied “negligent act” and that, there being no fault in anyone, the proviso fell away.
Teare J sided with owners: “act”, he said, meant “act”, no more and no less. Probably rightly, in our view. If you insist on using a vessel in a particular way – for example as a floating warehouse – and a third-party claim results, there is much to be said for the idea that this is something you do at your own risk. Mind you, this result now leaves plenty of work for lawyers in future cases in arguing about how far a given claim is caused by a given (faultless) act: but we can leave that for another day.
