Trip charterparties and their binary endgames

Abstract

This article takes its starting point in the normative framework surrounding charterparties and explores the limits and degree of flexibility of that contractual framework. While certain categories of charterparties are well-established and universally acknowledged, it is also generally recognised both judicially and in literature that the parties are not bound by such categories but are free to develop their own terms, within a spectrum of hybrid contractual forms deviating from the entrenched typology. The example of trip-time charters is here considered in the context of contract certainty and predictability: while by no means a rare or recent phenomenon in chartering practice, and while textbooks and judicial dicta signal recognition in principle of this form of contract, this article argues that reality differs from such assertions. It will be argued that the absence of judicial and literary attention to these issues to date suggests a deeper unspoken truth: there are in fact no hybrid charterparties, and the end game will always be a reversion to the binary model.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Johanna Hjalmarsson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7362-811X

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