National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia v BP Oil Supply Company [2011] EWCA Civ 1127, [2011] All ER (D) 139 (Oct)
The touchstone of the approach to the question of whether a claim was time-barred pursuant to a charterparty time-bar clause was a requirement of clarity sufficient to achieve certainty rather than a requirement of strict compliance which, if applied inflexibly, could lead to uncommercial results. The basic requirement of cl 20.1 of the BPVOY 4 form was that a charterer should have received both the claim and the supporting documentation within the stipulated period. In approaching that issue, a pedantic or strict approach which focused on the form of the presentation rather than the substance should not be adopted. Consequently, the documentation supporting a demurrage claim did not have to be all presented together.
