London Arbitration 2/24

In a T/C dispute involving a laden passage from Venezuela to Italy, Charterers alleged ‘unreported’ voyages near the load port and Gibraltar, misrepresentations (BOD and consumption) and underperformance, and deducted from hire. The Tribunal found disclosure failings: Owners’ logs were variously illegible or incomplete, the oil record book was withheld; Charterers did not volunteer their contemporaneous weather routing report, relying instead on a reconstruction by their expert.  Nevertheless, the Tribunal found that Master’s noon reports were not ‘wildly’ inaccurate, and neither the contemporaneous evidence nor Charterers’ expert evidence supported any of their allegations. Owners’ hire claim succeeded, and Charterers’ cross claim failed, each in full.