“Under a voyage charter on an amended Shellvoy 5 form, charterers exercised their right to cancel but also claimed damages following from a breach of the obligation to commence the approach voyage in time. Although the c/p contained neither ETA nor expected readiness to load provision, the CA, confirming the Court below, found that the c/p references to the previous fixture itinerary equally imposed upon owners an obligation to begin the approach voyage "forthwith" or "within a reasonable time".”

“In March, the Commercial Court ruled that a bank's proceedings against a carrier for misdelivery of cargo activated LOIs granted by voyage charterers, Glencore, to disponent owners, Navig8. Glencore's time bar defence, based on Clause 38 of the voyage charter (providing that "the period of validity of any letter of indemnity will be 3 months from date of issue... the indemnity will expire at the end of.. three-month period"), had been dismissed on the basis that the Clause was not a time bar but simply defined the deliveries to be covered by LOIs. Despite the Court of Appeal holding that Clause 38 did constitute a time bar, it nevertheless dismissed Glencore's appeal on the grounds that the LOI terms were 'stand-alone' and included no equivalent expiry provision to that in the charter. “

“Bumi Armada granted Tozzi a right of first refusal for certain works in a floating gas production and storage facility construction project; having awarded those works elsewhere, Bumi Armada said that the right was not binding as the minutes of meeting recording it (drawn up by Bumi Armada but signed by both parties) were expressed to be "subject to ...contract". The Court of Appeal found that the first refusal agreement had been concluded orally at the meeting and that on the facts, the minutes had no contractual effect and their "subject to contract" proviso was ineffective.”

“H, the guarantor of a long-term time charter, faced a USD68.Sm claim from S after charterers failed to perform. H argued that both charter and guarantee were unenforceable, being procured by bribery, evidenced by individuals' confessions. S said the confessions resulted from torture. All relevant parties and events were in the PRC. The 1st instance Judge found no bribery and that neither the confession nor torture evidence was reliable. The CA ruled that the Judge should first have decided upon the torture, so his finding on bribery was unsound. In the unusual circumstances, the matter was remitted to another 1st instance judge to consider the evidence afresh.”

“The Court of Appeal reaffirmed that "unit" in Article IV rule 5 of the Hague Visby Rules means a physical item and that "enumeration... as packed" means no more than specification in words or figures of the number of packages. Therefore, the first instance judge correctly concluded that the specification on the bills (in this case, waybills) was such that identified individual frozen tuna loins as the relevant units.”

“Although the conduct of a judge in meeting one party's Counsel in private and discussing elements of the case was considered "inept", the Court of Appeal found that on the basis of the relevant facts a fair-minded observer would not conclude that the judge's inappropriate conduct could indicate any possibility that he was biased. No submissions were made privately by the Counsel, all the judge's comments were communicated to the other party and the innocuous nature of the conversation gave rise to no inference that the judge would decide the case other than impartially.”