In brief - An old war story in which key legal principles were
applied to a shipping mystery
A "bizarre discovery" at a concrete processing plant
showed that a batch of aggregate had been contaminated with water
and sugar during its shipping. This led to an interesting case in
1979 where the cargo owners sued the carrier for breach of their
contract of affreightment (COA) and negligence. The carrier in turn
cross-claimed against the ship owner from which they had chartered
the ship.
Water and sugar left over in ship's hold contaminate
aggregate
In the case of South Coast Basalt P/L and Pioneer Concrete
(NSW) P/L v RW Miller and Co P/L (NSWSC, Yeldham J,
22/04/1977, unreported), the two plaintiffs, South Coast Basalt and
Pioneer Concrete (SCB and PC), were wholly owned subsidiaries of
Pioneer Concrete Services Pty Ltd. SCB was the lessee of a basalt
quarry at Bass Point, six hours by sea south of Sydney. From about
1973, basalt, which had been extracted from the
