October, 2020 - Eternal Bliss – damages and demurrage
The English High Court has recently handed down judgment in the “Eternal Bliss,” providing a firm answer to a long-standing question concerning the availability of damages where a ship is on demurrage.
It has previously been suggested that the demurrage regime provided an exhaustive remedy to the shipowner in respect of a charterer’s failure to load or discharge cargo within its allowed time, such that damages over and above demurrage were only recoverable where a charterer had breached a separate term of the charterparty. The contrary view was that damages in principle were available in addition to demurrage where the shipowner had suffered a separate loss in addition to its loss of use of the ship as
a freight-earning instrument.