Research On Legal Issues Of Demurrage In Container Shipping

Disputes about container appears continuously with the development of container shipping,among which the most frequently confronted is the demurrage dispute.Nevertheless,the courts have different judgments in judicial practice as a result of imperfection of relevant laws and regulations.Clarifying various problems with respect to the demurrage is conducive not only to theoretical studies in this field,but also to the solution of practical problems.Therefore,based on judicial practice,this paper discusses four contro’versial issues,which are the nature of demurrage,the subject of liability,the extent of liability and the obligation of the subject of right to mitigate the loss in the demurrage in container shipping.The paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter begins with basic issues of the topic.A rough idea of background and current situation will be developed by explaining the classification and cause of demurrage.Further,to analyze the legal relationship concerning the liability of demurrage and its nature,which lays a foundation for the following chapters.The second chapter mainly discusses the subject of liability.The first part focuses on how to determine the subject and emphatically analyzes the binding effect of bills of lading and equipment interchange receipts.The second part specifies the division and recognition of subject in different situations,including consignee,consigner and freight forwarder.In this part,the author will make a detailed analysis with references to combination of cases,laws and practice to make the status and obligation of all parties involved in demurrage dispute explicit.The third chapter mainly argues the extent of liability.This chapter makes detailed analysis of the calculation basis for the amount of demurrage firstly,including beginning&ending time and generally standard.Furthermore,the author will focus on different extents of liability.This part emphasizes on the summary of all restrictions on the amount of demurrage in the existing effective judgements,then analyzing and evaluating it.The fourth chapter elaborates on the obligation of the subject of right to mitigate the loss.In terms of legal theory,the legal basis of the obligation to mitigate the loss and its practice under Anglo-American law and Chinses law are firstly introduced,which make a foreshadowing for the below.In the second part,problems about reasonable measures under obligation to mitigate the loss will be analyzed,including detailed analysis of the argumentation of the rationality and rational criterion.The third part will be centered on different types of mitigation measures the subject of right can adopt and detailed feasibility analysis,which is based on empirical analysis.