Quiana Navigation SA v Pacific Gulf Shipping (Singapore) PTE Ltd “Caravos Liberty” [2019] EWHC 3171 (Comm) involved a time charter under which the charterers made an underpayment of the fourth instalment of hire but owners did not exercise their right to withdraw under the BIMCO withdrawal clause incorporated into the time charter. However, the shortfall remained and at the time of the sixth instalment, which was paid in full, the owners decided to withdraw the vessel on account of the remaining shortfall in hire under the fourth instalment. The key words in the BIMCO Clause are “If the hire is not received by the Owners by midnight on the due date, the Owners may immediately following such non-payment suspend the performance of any or all of their obligations under this Charter Party (and if they so suspend, inform the Charterers accordingly) until such time as the payment due is received by the Owners.” In the context of the right to withdraw, what constitutes ‘the hire’? The tribunal found that it referred to the hire for that particular instalment and did not encompass previous underpayments. Cockerill J upheld that decision. The question “What is the hire?” question could only sensibly be answered and one single date produced if the charterers’ approach were preferred. Cockerill J stated [42]:
“[i]t is artificial to ignore the temporal dimension inherent in the reference to a “due date” in (a); and equally artificial to say that the sum outstanding from the fourth instalment was due “on” 10 August. Owners’ argument also, either (as Charterers would put it) impermissibly elides the very real distinction between the continuing entitlement to recover hire as a debt and on the other the independent contractual entitlement to withdraw or at least attempts to draw focus from the existence of other remedies.”
Accordingly, owners’ withdrawal was unjustified and amounted to a repudiation of the charter.
