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A tug is assisting a loaded barge into a berth. The tug’s master misjudges the approach, the barge strikes the dock, and there is damage to the barge, the dock, and the cargo. Who pays depends almost entirely on two things. Which contract form governs, and which side of the Atlantic you are on. International towage has settled on a risk allocation that the United States Supreme Court declared void as a matter of public policy in 1955 and has never retreated from. That decisio

In October 2006, the capesize bulk carrier Ocean Victory was discharging iron ore at Kashima in Japan when weather deteriorated. A long swell combined with a northwesterly gale reaching Force 9 on the Beaufort scale. The master decided to leave the berth, lost control of the vessel in the Kashima fairway, and she was driven onto the breakwater and became a total loss. The vessel's hull insurers paid, took an assignment of the owners' and demise charterer's rights, and brought

On September 9, a Federal Maritime Commission administrative law judge rejected Peloton Interactive's claim against Flexport in full. The company had sought $33.7 million in detention, demurrage, and storage charges accumulated during the pandemic-era supply chain disruption. It recovered nothing. The breakdown of what was claimed is instructive. Roughly $13.8 million in demurrage, $16.2 million in equipment detention, and $3.7 million in yard and warehouse storage, across th

For a terminal operator, warehouse, or forwarder, revenue can stop overnight while costs carry on. Rent, equipment leases, payroll, and financing do not pause because a fire closed your facility or a windstorm took the roof off. Business interruption coverage exists to bridge exactly that gap, and for an operation with high fixed costs it is frequently the difference between a difficult year and a closed business. It is also the coverage most often bought at the base level an

A voyage charter gives the charterer a fixed period to load and discharge. Use less and the owner may owe despatch. Use more and the charterer owes demurrage. Between those two outcomes sits a calculation that is arithmetically simple and legally treacherous, and most disputes turn on which hours counted rather than on how the addition was done. The Laytime Definitions for Charter Parties 2013 define laytime as the period of time agreed between the parties during which the ow

In March 2014, OW Bunker listed on the Copenhagen exchange. It was Denmark's third largest company by revenue and the largest marine fuel supplier in the world. Eight months later it was in bankruptcy, thirteen banks were owed $750 million, and shipowners across every major trading region were discovering that they might have to pay for the same bunkers twice. The collapse produced a decade of litigation across multiple jurisdictions, a UK Supreme Court decision that reclassi

There is a gap at the center of the marine fuel industry that catches operators out with striking regularity. A cargo of fuel can be delivered fully compliant with the ISO 8217 specification stated in the contract, pass an independent laboratory test against every parameter in the relevant table, and still wreck an engine. The specification and the engine's tolerance are two different things, set by two different bodies, for two different purposes, and the distance between th

Every major demurrage dispute begins somewhere. In the vast majority of voyage charter party claims, the starting point is not the cargo, not the port, and not the rate. It is a single document that determines when the laytime clock begins to run. That document is the Notice of Readiness (NOR), and its deceptively simple function, notifying the charterer that the vessel has arrived and is ready to perform, generates more litigation in the English courts and before London arbi