Under The Lease. Voyage Demurrage Charges Related To Legal Issues,

In the practice of maritime justice of various countries, demurrage is always the key problem focus on voyage charter business and the current situation of globe ports congestion directly results in the frequent occurring of demurrage disputes. As regards the issue of demurrage, relevant works may well be innumerable, all of which hold several editions to follow the development of judicial practice.Regarding Voyage Charter Party, there are various of contract forms in the practice, such as GENCON, ASBATANKVOY, AUSTRAL, etc. However, none of these contract forms is compulsive, the parties can rectify them according to their own desire. In the field of charter business, which possess little mandatory provision, the freedom in decision seems to be quite important. As the provisions related to laytime and demurrage usually cover high demurrage and frequently happened issues, as well as updated sprite in such cases, this paper is aim to analyze the judicial situation of demurrage and observe the legal practice in Anglo-American law.The whole paper covers the following aspects combining the legal principle established by Anglo-American law and the practical standpoint toward demurrage, including risk sharing of demurrage, legal requirement of the initialization of laytime, the interruption of demurrage and the demurrage obligation of non-charterer. Also this paper try to elaborate in detail the legal problems concerning demurrage as follows: recognition of demurrage risk by case law, renewing of demurrage responsibility of both parties, the obligation of ship owners to reduce the loss of demurrage, distinguishment of a Berth Charter Party and a Port Charter Party, the legal situation of an invalid NOR, the demurrage interruptive effect of exclusion clause and faults of the ship owners, which party should assume the demurrage occurred in loading ports, etc. In addition, this paper applies the recent case, for example, "the Happy Day", to discuss the initialization of laytime and demurrage, the legal situation of an invalid NOR, as well as the allocation of demurrage risk and countermeasures. In the end, this paper also go deep into the issue of demurrage under bill of lading, which exist in mass nowadays.With the analysis from the legal nature of demurrage, this paper try to study the demurrage problems much more systematically through plenty of cases existing in Anglo-American law, so as to contribute to the people in shipping area and legal practice.