Laytime, demurrage and implied safety obligations

Abstract

A great deal of trouble is taken, by draftsman of voyage charterparties, to apportion risks of delay between owners and charterers at loading and discharge. Care must be taken over the commencement of laytime, the circumstances in which notice of readiness can be tendered, and exceptions and interruptions to laytime and demurrage. The complexities of demurrage alone have been judicially described as 'hideous': and no doubt the same sentiments can equally apply to laytime. This careful apportionment of delay risk can be entirely upset if the delay occurs before laytime is triggered. If charterers are held to have committed a breach of an independent term, preventing the laytime from running, damages will be for detention and neither layime nor demurrage provisions will be triggered. Charterers will lose the benefit of their laytime, and neither side will enjoy the convenience of the liquidated damages provided by the demurrage regime. This article considers two problems in this regard which could arise from recent decisions of the courts; first, the widening of safe port and safe berth obligations to encompass delay, and secondly, the implication of such terms into charterparties. Whatever view may be taken of these developments generally, neither is desirable in the contect of careful risk apportionment. To date, the courts have to some extent embraced the first, while fortunately restricting the second.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record