Demurrage time bar clauses are a commonplace in tanker charters. They require owners to submit their claim with supporting documentation within a specified period of time after completion of discharge, failing which the claim is extinguished. Some clauses extend this regime to all claims by owners against charterers. However, what happens to the time bar when the cargo is never discharged, because charterers have repudiated the charter and have never loaded a cargo? The Tribunal in London Arbitration 3/18 has found that the clause which discharged the charterer from all liability if appropriate documentation is not provided “within 90 days after completion of discharge at last discharging port” did not affect owners’ load port demurrage claim, nor their cancellation claim. The clause could not operate effectively in circumstances where the contemplated voyage was not performed at all. If charterers had wanted the clause to operate in these circumstances, they needed to provide clearly for this eventuality, as is the case with the Hague/Hague-Visby Rules which discharge an owner from liability if suit was not brought within one year of the delivery of the goods or of the “date when they should have been delivered”. A similar finding was made by Nigel Teare QC, as he then was, in The Bow Cedar,[2005] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 275.
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Professor Simon Baughen
Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.
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