THE 'ZENOVIA' - Commercial Court Overturns Maritime Arbitration Award Relating To Redelivery Notice: IMT SHIPPING AND CHARTERING GMBH V CHANSUNG SHIPPING COMPANY LTD [2009] EWHC 739 (Comm)

This is a shipping dispute that was

initially dealt with in arbitration but subsequently appealed to

the Commercial Court pursuant to section 69 Arbitration Act 1996.

Somewhat surprisingly, given the courts' usual reluctance to

overturn arbitration awards except in extenuating circumstances, in

this case, Mr. Justice Tomlinson decided the arbitration award

should be set aside. However, the judge did qualify his decision by

indicating that he had had the advantage over the Tribunal of

hearing oral argument from highly skilled counsel, whereas in the

arbitration, oral argument had been dispensed with. Mr. Justice

Tomlinson expressed the view that had the arbitrators had the

benefit of hearing the oral submissions put to him, they would have

reached a different conclusion.

Background to

dispute

The case involved a time charter in

amended New York Produce Exchange Form. There was a chain of

charterparties as follows: the owners, CSC, time-chartered the

vessel to COSCO, COSCO sub-chartered to WBC, WBC sub-sub-time

chartered to IMT. These three time charters were treated by the

parties and the arbitrators as being back-to-back.

The earliest and latest permissible

redelivery dates for the vessel were treated as being 20 September

2007 and 22 November 2007 respectively. Towards the end of the

charter period, IMT sub-chartered the vessel to Oldendorff, who

sub-chartered to Noble for a time-charter trip.

On 5th October 2007,

Noble gave approximate notice of redelivery "1 sp China on

about 04 Nov 2007 basis agw, wp, wog, uce".

The message was passed up the broker

chain and the version eventually received by owners gave the

redelivery date as 6th November 2007. Subsequently, the

charterers decided to squeeze in a further voyage before the

contractual redelivery date so they sent out a further notice to

owners on 15 October saying "... we hereby revise the date of

redelivery to owners to abt Nov 20th within the range of

redelivery".

Owners wrote back the following day

saying they had already fixed the vessel for her next employment

and insisted the vessel had to be redelivered at the end of the

voyage to China. Charterers refused and said they had the right to

use the full period given by the contract. Consequently, owners

withdrew the vessel from the chartered service on 2nd

November and charterers contended this was a wrongful withdrawal

and claimed damages for repudiation.

The parties in the contractual chain

entered into an agreement to submit to...