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Charterers orders to wait off berth not an extra contractual service; time falls within the laytime and demurrage regime.
London Arbitration 14-21 involved a claim by owners that time spent waiting on charterer’s orders following tender of NOR at the discharge port was a non-contractual service which should be remunerated by way of quantum meruit. This would be at the demurrage rate and would include bunkers consumed while waiting.
The Tribunal rejected the claim. Laytime had already started to run when the charterers ordered the vessel to wait off berth. This was not a non-contractual order as in The Saronikos [1986] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 277 and Glencore Energy UK Ltd v OMV Supply & Trading Ltd [2018] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 223. The charterers were entitled to use the whole of the agreed laytime, whether by holding the ship off the berth, or by berthing her and not working her for some time, or by berthing her and working her immediately. Once laytime had started to count the charterers were entitled to use it in full. Even if owners had been right, they would not have been entitled to anything for bunker consumption. Assuming the demurrage rate was to be taken as a genuine pre-estimate of damages for detention, it had to follow that running expenses, including bunker costs, were to be taken as included in the agreed rate.
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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