London Arbitration 11/22
What happens if parties agree that the chartered vessel (time or trip charter) would deviate to perform a specific task (e.g. crew change) but after the agreed task is completed further delay arises as a result of other factors (e.g. bad weather) and consequently additional time is lost? Is this a risk that shipowner assumes or is it simply an operational hazard that charterer in a time/trip charter is normally expected to bear?
This was the main issue that the tribunal was asked to address in London Arbitration 11/22 (a proceeding brought under LMAA Small Claims Procedure). The vessel was chartered under an amended NYPE 93 form for a trip from a sole load port in the Sea of Japan to a discharge port in the South China Sea carrying a cargo of steel billets and with an estimated duration of 25 to 30 days. The parties agreed in the charter that the vessel would have had a crew change at Hongai (Vietnam) and the deviation time and bunker costs to be at owners’ account. After the crew change had taken place on departing Hongai the vessel encountered bad weather in the South China Sea and her speed was reduced. The charterers made a deduction of 1.05 day from hire for the delay caused by bad weather following departure from Hongai. The owners argued that the charterers’ deduction was unlawful and breach of charterparty.
In effect, this is a dispute concerning the application of “causation principles” in the context of a term in a charterparty. There can be no doubt that any time lost during the process of deviating to Hongai for crew exchange is on the owners’ account. However, does the owner remain responsible for any delay that occurs after the crew change had been completed on the premise that further delay would not have happened had the vessel not deviated to Hongai in the first instance?
There is little doubt that the deviation was a “but for” cause of the further delay arising due to bad weather after leaving Hongai but is this adequate to make owners’ liable? The tribunal thought “not”! And rightly so! Imagine that a taxi driver is involved in an accident after dropping a customer at a cottage in a remote location. Will it be possible for the driver to revert to the customer seeking compensation for the loss asserting that s/he would not have ben at that location if the customer had not engaged his/her services in the first place. Naturally not! One might say this is a different situation here as the charterer and owner are still in a contractual relationship. That is true but to make one party liable for consequential losses emerging in a contract, it is necessary that the term in question adopts a broad “causation trigger” to that effect. The clause in question here did not, but merely stated that “the deviation time/bunker/costs to be at Owners’ time/account”. In a similar context (indemnity for charterer’s orders) , the Supreme Court in The Kos [2012) UKSC 17, [2012] 2 Lloyd’s Rep 292 making a distinction between “effective causes” and “but for” causes ruled that in the absence of contrary wording in the relevant clause only losses emerging from an effective cause of the loss are recoverable. Here it can plausibly be argued that the relevant clause (enabling deviation for crew change) did not introduce a broad causation trigger and the loss arising due to bad weather was a “but for” cause and not an effective one.
