04 April 2012
Osmium Shipping Corporation v Cargill International SA [2012] EWHC 571 (Comm), [2012] All ER (D) 196 (Mar)
Off-hire provisions of a charter did not necessarily, or indeed usually, tie in with the provisions of the charter which related to breach of obligation by one party or the other. Further, standard form charters were often used with a series of add-on special clauses which did not always fit together immaculately. Where there were one or more clauses which dealt with off-hire events, they had to be looked at together and reconciled, but where the charter provided for off-hire in some provisions and charterparty obligations and remedies for breach in others, the focus inevitably had to be on the off-hire clauses when determining whether the off-hire event had occurred.