The charterers entered into a charterparty contract with the owners of the C Challenger in February 2017 for a period of two years. The charterparty contained a term warranting fuel consumption and speed. Following problems with a turbocharger, the charterers alleged inter alia that the owners had misrepresented the vessel’s performance capabilities. The charterers raised the issue concerning potential misrepresentation on the part of the owner of the capabilities of the chartered vessel during a meeting in London on 21 March 2017. It was not until 19 October 2017 that the charterers purported to rescind for misrepresentation or to terminate for repudiatory breach. During the period of March- September 2017, the charterers continued to use the vessel (by fixing occasionally sub-fixtures); deduct periodically from hire and reserve their rights. The following day, the owners purported to terminate on the basis that the charterers’ message was itself a renunciation.
Was there a misrepresentation on the part of the owners?
Under common law, for the charterers to be able to rescind the contract (i.e. set the charterparty aside) it is essential that they demonstrate that the owners made an inaccurate representation with regard to the capabilities of the chartered vessel in terms of speed and consumption. The main argument put forward by the charterers was that the details of the vessel’s consumption circulated to the market by the owners constituted a representation of fact (and this representation was substantially inaccurate). Foxton, J, rather appropriately, held that an owner by offering a continuing speed and consumption warranty in a charterparty could not be assumed to make an implicit representation as to the vessel’s current or recent performance. This certainly makes sense given that the warranty in question did not require the owners to act or refrain from acting in a certain way. The so-called “speed and consumption” warranty in the contract simply related to a particular state of affairs and was only concerned with the allocation of responsibility for certain costs in relation thereto.
However, this was not the end of the matter! The charters also argued that in a letter sent by the owners, historical speed and consumption data provided which was not reasonably consistent with the average performance of the vessel over its last three voyages and therefore untrue. Foxton, J, found that the owners did not have reason to believe that the statement based on the three recent voyages was true and accordingly this amounted material misrepresentation. However, he also found that this would not have given the charterers the right to rescind the contract as there was no inducement. This was the case because if the same warranty had been offered, but no representation made as to the vessel’s performance, the charterparty would have been concluded on the same terms.
The effect of ‘reserving rights’
It is rather common for most parties in shipping practice to add a ‘reservation of rights’ statement to the end of messages in pre-action correspondence. Usually, such a statement has the effect of preventing subsequent conduct of an innocent party constituting an election. The trial judge found that the charterers were aware at the latest in July 2017 that the fuel consumption of the chartered vessel was misdescribed by the owners. Whilst the charterers sent messages to the owners that they wished to reserve their rights emerging from the misconduct of the owners, they went ahead to fix a voyage with a sub-charterer expecting the owners to execute this voyage. Foxton, J, on that basis, held that such actions of the charterers were incompatible with an attempt to reserve rights to set it aside the charterparty ab initio for misrepresentation of which they had complained. Put differently, the judgment illustrates that in a case where the innocent party demands substantial contractual performance from the other, this is unlikely to be prevented from being treated as an “affirmation” simply because the innocent party earlier attempted to reserve its rights.
Was the owner in repudiatory breach?
The judge accepted that the owner was in breach of the charterparty i) by refusing to accept the legitimacy of the Charterer’s refusal to pay hire or make deductions from hire and ii) by sending messages demanding payment of hire, wrongly asserting that the Charterer was in breach. The terms breached were deemed to be innominate terms. However, it was held that the breaches complained of, taken cumulatively, had not deprived the charterers of substantially the whole benefit which they were intended to obtain under the charterparty for the payment of hire, or “go to the root” of the charterparty. As a result, the charterers had not been entitled to terminate the charterparty and their communication to that effect was itself a renunciation, entitling the owners to damages representing the loss it suffered by reason.
The facts of the case provided a great opportunity to the trial judge to construe and apply several key principles of contract law (note that in the judgment there is also an obiter discussion on the application of s. 2(2) of the Misrepresentation Act 1967). Perhaps the most significant contribution of the case to the development of the contract law is the trial judge’s observation on the effect of reserving rights in this context. As noted, the previous authorities have not provided any extensive consideration to this matter. It is now emphasised clearly that a reservation of rights will often have the effect of preventing subsequent conduct from constituting an election to keep the contract alive, but this is not an inevitable rule. One might say in this context “actions might speak louder than words”. So in any case whether a statement reserving the rights of an innocent party has the desired impact will depend on the actions of the innocent party!
