Interclub Agreement 2018
Agile Holdings Corporation v Essar Shipping Ltd (The "Maria") [2018] EWHC 1055 (Comm) Notes: For a claim under the CIA to be recovered, the underlying claims must have been claimed under a charter party approved contract of carriage, i.e., an issued waybill was not issued in violation of the applicable terms of the Charter Party. The term "contract of carriage" is very broad and, therefore, CIA claims can arise from any type of contract of carriage, including bills of lading, sea waybills, charter companies or even sub-charters. Considering that the ICA is a commercial arrangement, courts are often reluctant to conclude that a bill of lading was not issued in accordance with the terms of the C/P and as such is "unauthorized" for the purposes of the ICA – see London Arbitration 3/13. (10) This Agreement shall be governed by English law and the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts, unless it is incorporated into the Charter Party (or the settlement of claims relating to goods under the Charter Party is subject to this Agreement), in which case it shall be subject to the law and jurisdictional provisions applicable to the Charter Party. The Interclub Agreement, also known as the ICA, first entered into force on February 20, 1970. This original version was first revised in 1984 and again in 1996. Currently, the latest version is the ICA 2011. The ICA was originally formulated by the International Group of P&I Clubs ("the IG") as an agreement between IG clubs, as they will recommend to their members to settle freight claims between owners and charterers registered in IG clubs. Once included in a charter party, the ICA becomes an agreement between the parties, not between their respective clubs.
It was designed to provide a simple mechanism for dividing freight claims between owners and charterers, and should be used with the New York Produce Exchange of (NYPE) and Asbatime charter parties. The charterers refused to provide security to the owners because the wording of the contractual charter clause limited the application of the CIA only to the liability, sharing and settlement of freight claims and not to the provision of guarantees. The tribunal agreed with the charterers that the ICA had not been fully incorporated into the charterer and that the ICA would only apply with respect to the charterer`s liability for the freight claim and its division and settlement. See London Arbitration 18/18 (2018) 1010 love my lifeN 2. Notes: Although primarily designed for use with these charter parties, the parties may, if they wish, integrate with other forms of charter parties by agreement. However, this should be done with caution, as not all charter party forms are so compatible and inconsistencies may occur. In 2004, the vessel "MARIA" was chartered by the owners of the plaintiff/plaintiff (Agile) to the defendant charterer (Essar) on a charter in time for a single voyage from Tunisia to India via Trinidad. The cargo was a directly reduced iron cargo (DRI) and the charter was on Form NYPE 46. Freight claims between the owner and the charterer must be settled in accordance with the ICA. During loading, the conveyor belt carrying the cargo caught fire.
The owner`s representative inspected the holds and indicated that loading could continue. The DRI was still in flames throughout the voyage and after the release, the cargo interests filed a lawsuit against the owners. The owners commenced arbitration to obtain a declaration from the charterers that they were required to indemnify them from any liability they might have under the CIA to the interests of the subpoena. The parties agreed that liability should be governed in accordance with the ICA and in particular clause 8(d). Paragraph 8(d), sometimes referred to as the "sweep" clause, provides for a 50/50 division of liability between owners and charterers for all other cargo claims not covered by paragraphs 8(a) to (c) of the ICA, unless there has been clear and irrefutable evidence that the claim arose out of the "act or negligence" of the charterer(s), in which case, they will bear 100% of the claim. The matter before the Court resulted from an appeal against an arbitral award by arbitrators in London. The claimants in the arbitration were the owners of the "Yangtze Xing Hua" ("the owners"), which they had chartered to the defendants in the arbitration ("the charterers") for a time charter trip with a cargo of soybean meal from South America to Iran. unless the owner proves that the unseaworthiness was caused by loading, backfilling, stowage, unloading or other handling of the cargo; in such a case, the claim shall be divided in accordance with subparagraph (b). The ICA`s objective is to avoid lengthy and costly litigation on liability and allocation issues, and instead seeks to establish an "approximate and voluntary" allocation of liability between the parties. Clubs encourage their members to accept the Allocation of Liability Agreement for any cargo claim arising out of, from or in connection with all Charter Parties on Form NYPE 1946 or Form asbatime 1981, whether or not this Agreement has been incorporated into such Charter Parties.
However, unless the CIA has been expressly included in the Charter Party, it may not be enforceable. Ultimately, it depends on the relevant facts and circumstances of a particular case. If.B, for example, there is a claim for defect and there is evidence that the spilled cargo has been swept away, collected and credited to the entire quantity received, it is unlikely that the cause of the defect is due to negligence / mistreatment of the stowage and instead probably either to empty the cargo or simply to different methods of The calculation of the quantity obtained is due. for example, the draught figures of the ship compared to the figures of the coastal scale. .