The English Commercial Court has granted an anti-suit injunction to restrain proceedings commenced by cargo interests in China in breach of a London arbitration clause incorporated into a bill of lading.

An anti-technicality clause is commonly found in time charters where the intention is to avoid a situation where owners may withdraw the vessel due to a late payment of hire that may be minimal or inconsequential.

An anti-technicality clause is commonly found in time charters where the intention is to avoid a situation where owners may withdraw the vessel due to a late payment of hire that may be minimal or inconsequential.

Time-bar provisions are commonly found in contracts for the carriage of goods by sea and road.

The High Court has recently looked at issues arising where one party seeks to enforce a liquidated damages clause incorporated into a shipbuilding contract, and the defaulting party contends that liquidated damages are not payable because they constitute a "penalty".

The judgment in this case deals with the recoverability of the costs of an arbitration as damages in a series of arbitration references, notwithstanding the absence of an arbitration reference for one of the links in the charterparty chain.

The dispute in this case arose out of the vessel’s failure to proceed immediately to her new discharge port when ordered to do so by the charterers.

Following the collapse of the shipping market in 2008, there were many instances of vessels under time charter being redelivered early by charterers who found themselves tied in to a financially unprofitable long-term charter.

In Sealion Shipping Ltd & Anor v Valiant Insurance Company (Toisa Pisces) the insurers denied liability for the insured’s loss of hire claim on various grounds.

The Hong Kong Shipping Register is currently one of the top registers in the world and has attracted significant international tonnage.

This sale contract dispute provides a useful reminder of some basic principles that the English courts will apply in construing commercial contracts.

The following is an extract from on-going discussions which started in October 2008 between Nick Gould, a corporate partner at Ince & Co, and several other interested parties.

Field J therefore concluded that the Tribunal had made no error of law in reaching its conclusion that the insured losses caused by the attack on the WTC arose out of two events and not one.

The English Courts have recently considered a deck carriage case in a world where the containerisation of the carriage of manufactured goods is now well established.

The Commercial Court in this case has decided as a preliminary issue an important question in the context of voyage charterparties, namely whether a strike exception to the running of laytime applies to stop laytime running (i) after the strike has ended; and (ii) where the vessel is delayed in berthing due to congestion that has arisen as a result of the strike.

This was an appeal by charterers against a first instance decision of Mr Justice Walker in the Commercial Court in 2009, which was covered in some detail in our January 2010 e-Brief.

The principal issue in this case was whether a time charterparty was frustrated after the vessel was involved in a collision and the costs of repairing the vessel exceeded her market value.

The recent case of Wilmar Oleo Pte Ltd v. Vinmar Chemicals and Polymers BV (MT Varkan Ege) [2011] EWHC 2067 (Comm) involved a dispute between the parties to an FOB sale contract for biofuel as to what terms, if any, had been agreed between them with regard to determination of the quality of the cargo.

The English Court of Appeal has recently clarified that it is, in principle, possible to constitute a tonnage limitation fund in England with a guarantee.

This clarification is to be welcomed, as it reduces the scope for uncertainty and the expensive legal disputes that can arise as a result.