Court of Appeal

Published April 22, 2008

AIC Ltd v Marine Pilot Ltd

Where a charterparty provided that the vessel should load at a single named safe port, the charterers thereby warranted the safety of that port.

The Court of Appeal (Sir Anthony Clarke, Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Longmore and Sir William Aldous) so held on March 7, 2008, when: (i) allowing the appeal of the owners, Marine Pilot Ltd, against Mrs Justice Gloster’s decision on May 17, 2007, to allow the appeal of the charterers, AIC Ltd, against the arbitrator’ interim declaratory award on May 16, 2006, on an issue as to deadweight, and (ii) dismissing the charterers’ appeal against the dismissal of their appeal on the issue of a safe port.

THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS said that the reference to “load one safe port Ventspils” imported a warranty that Ventspils, Latvia, was a safe port. That accorded with the agreed meaning on the discharge ports.

It would be odd to construe the words as to the loading port differently. The natural construction was that the charterers were warranting that Ventspils was a safe port.

BothUllises Shipping Corporation v Fal Shipping Co Ltd ([2006] EWHC 1729 (Comm)) and STX Pan Ocean Co Ltd v Ugland Bulk Transport AS ([2008] 1 Lloyd’s Rep 86) at first instance, supported that construction.

Two London arbitration awards cited, to the extent that they were inconsistent with that interpretation, were incorrect.

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