Part of Asbatankvoy Clause 8 states<\/p>\n

If, however, demurrage shall be incurred at ports of loading and\/or discharge by reason of fire, explosion, storm or by a strike, lockout, stoppage or restraint of labor or by breakdown of machinery or equipment in or about the plant of the Charterer, supplier, shipper or consignee of the cargo, the rate of demurrage shall be reduced one half of the amount stated in Part I per running hour or pro rata for part of an hour for demurrage so incurred.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have a regular debate about this clause when I share a practical demurrage session with a lawyer on one of the training seminars I am involved with.<\/p>\n

My point of view –<\/strong> if there is a delay whilst the vessel is still within her laytime but the vessel nevertheless incurs demurrage, if that delay is caused by one of the quoted causes then for the duration of that delay the demurrage should run at half rate. T<\/strong><\/p>\n

he Opposing view –<\/strong> because the clause mentions only demurrage, then the half rate provision will only apply if the delay occurred after laytime has expired. As an example in a case where the charter allows 72 hours, if the event occurs in the first 72 hours then time runs in full and any demurrage incurred after the 72 hours is paid at the full rate. If the event occurs after the first 72 hours then that part of the demurrage will run at half rate.<\/p>\n

Our argument depends on the interpretation of the words “If, however, demurrage shall be incurred”<\/em> and my view is that demurrage has been incurred albeit that the event happened before laytime had expired.<\/p>\n

In my defence I quote two rather old arbitration cases where this was decided in my favour: London Arbitration 10\/89 and London Arbitration 18\/04.<\/p>\n

I had thought there were no court cases on this point but I have come across this article on the Skuld website http:\/\/www.skuld.com\/templates\/newspage.aspx?id=881 which infers that the breakdown of the Afrapearl was decided in my favour. I don’t know if this was ever part of the dispute in this case as the Afrapearl was a landmark case in dealing with what constitutes a “breakdown of machinery or equipment in or about the plant of the Charterer, supplier, shipper or consignee of the cargo”<\/em><\/p>\n

What do you think? Are you on my side? Do you have arguments for the opposing view? Please convince me by posting your views here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of Asbatankvoy Clause 8 states If, however, demurrage shall be incurred at ports of loading and\/or discharge by reason of fire, explosion, storm or by a strike, lockout, stoppage or restraint of labor or by breakdown of machinery or equipment in or about the plant of the Charterer, supplier, shipper or consignee of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-demurrage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hubse.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}