Demurrage & time bar

A voyage charter normally has rider clauses requiring owners to submit specified documents within a certain period of time when making a claim for demurrage. Disputes may arise regarding equivalency of such docs as in London Arbitration 01/21 where charterers, who were looking to avoid paying demurrage of $197k, said that some of the documents submitted were invalid.

Demurrage invoice: Owners had submitted a time sheet which stated time & money claimed. Charterers said this was not an invoice. Going by precedent set in The Liano [2007], demurrage/laytime calc & invoice could be in the same doc as per the tribunal. If charterers wanted a separate invoice, they should have specified it by inserting the words “in addition to”.

Statement of facts: owners had provided 2 docs, one headed 'SOF' but not signed by receivers and other headed 'time sheet' and signed by receivers. The latter contained all the information expected of a SOF and was accepted by the tribunal.

Discharging / pumping log: Owners had provided a signed time sheet which as per them was equivalent to a discharging/pumping log, as it contained all the necessary details. The tribunal accepted it.

Here charterers had failed to identify any specific doc (or information) that owners had not provided.

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