Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
LAST VOYAGE ORDERS—AGAIN
The Gregos
Because no-one can be certain when any vessel will finish a voyage, it is not surprising that in recent years the question has several times been before the courts1 as to whether the charterer under a time charterparty was entitled to give the order he did for the vessel’s last voyage before redelivery. There has emerged the principle that the charterer is entitled to give orders for a “legitimate” last voyage but not for an “illegitimate” last voyage. Although there is an ever-present danger that these expressions may become “lazy phrases”2 and they must be used with caution, they are a convenient shorthand. The former is a voyage which it may reasonably be expected will allow the vessel to be redelivered by the terminal date of the chartered service. The latter is the opposite. The owner does not have to carry out an order for an illegitimate last voyage. He is obliged to accept an order for a legitimate last voyage but redelivery after the terminal date (unless caused by the owner’s fault) will be a breach of contract by the charterer. For this breach the owner will, in the absence of a special provision in the charterparty to the contrary,3 be entitled to damages if the market rate is higher than the contract rate, as well as to his hire up to the date of redelivery.
What had not been decided until the decision of the Court of Appeal in The Gregos
4 was whether the owner has to carry out a last voyage which was legitimate when ordered but had ceased to be so when the time came for carrying out the order.5 The arbitrator (Mr Mark Hamsher) and Evans, J.,6 decided that he did not; the Court of Appeal (Russell, Hirst and Simon Brown, L.JJ.) decided that he did.
It often happens that, when a point of general law arises for decision, the facts before the court are about as unsatisfactory as can be imagined for giving it the dispassionate consideration it requires. Those of The Gregos were no exception. The vessel was time chartered on the NYPE form for a period of about 50 to maximum 70 days at charterer’s option. The charter provided:
8 … the Captain … shall be under the orders and the directions of the Charterers as regards employment and agency …
1. See, e.g., The Berge Tasta
[1975] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 422; The Democritos
[1976] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 149; The Matija Gubec
[1983] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 24; The Black Falcon
[1991] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 77; The Peonia
[1991] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 100.
2. “A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, indiscriminately used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas” per Justice Frankfurter in Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Co. (1943) 318 U.S. 54, 68, cited by Roskill, L. J., in Aldebaran Compania Maritima S. A. v. Aussenhandel A.G. (The Darrah)
[1976] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 285, 289.
3. As in Chiswell Shipping Ltd v. National Iranian Tanker Co. (The World Symphony and The World Renown)
[1992] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 115, noted by Halson [1993] LMCLQ 19.
4. Torvald Klaveness AIS v. Arni Maritime Corp. (The Gregos)
[1993] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 335.
5. The question had been deliberately left undecided by Staughton, L.J., in The Matija Gubec
[1983] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 24 and by Saville, J., in The Peonia
[1991] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 100.
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