In Navig8 Chemicals Pool Inc v. Glencore Agriculture BV (The Songa Winds) [2018] EWCA Civ 1901, the Court of Appeal had to consider whether a time bar clause in a voyage charter operated to bar claims under a letter of indemnity issued by charterers to owners in respect of delivery of cargo without production of bills of lading. Clause 38 of the charter required the owners to release the cargo against charterers’ letter of indemnity (LOI) if bills of lading were not available at the discharge port and the period of validity of any letter of indemnity was to be three months from date of issue. The LOI provided by charterers did not refer to any time bar and provided in clause 5 “. As soon as all original bills of lading for the above cargo shall have come into our possession, to deliver the same to you, or otherwise cause all original bills of lading to be delivered to you, whereupon our liability hereunder shall cease.”
Two points arose. Was the LOI provided by charterers subject to the three month time bar provided in the charterparty? If so, how did that time bar run? Andrew Baker J, [2018] EWHC 397 (Comm) ,had found that the LOI was not subject to the time bar, and that the effect of the time bar was that the period within which the requested delivery of the cargo must take place was three months from the date of delivery.
The Court of Appeal has upheld the first finding. Charterers had the contractual right to insist that the LOI incorporated the terms set out in cl.38 but they had failed to do so. Clause 5 of the LOIs was a self-contained provision which confines charterers’ liability, and which containeds no reference to any extraneous term which might impact on the time limit of that liability.Their LOIs were distinct agreements to the voyage charter, setting out self-contained obligations and rights which could be relied on by third parties, such as owners’ agents, as against charterers.
On the second point, however, the Court of Appeal rejected the judge’s construction of cl. 38 and found that cl.38 meant that there was a time limit of three months for making claims.
