Insights

This is the latest case to consider the assessment of damages arising from the early re-delivery of a ship by a charterer in breach of charterparty, in circumstances where there was no available market in which to re- x the ship on an equivalent basis. The dispute arose from a rather unusual scenario as the ship was sold by her owner due to the charterer’s early re-delivery.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment offers a useful recap on principles of mitigation and their applicability to ‘no available market’ cases.

The relative ease with which arbitration awards can be enforced against parties or assets located overseas is an undeniable bene t of agreeing to arbitration for dispute resolution purposes when entering into commercial agreements. The 1958 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards ("the New York Convention") provides for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards in the jurisdictions of its signatories. This can often provide a quicker and more cost-effective enforcement process than would be the case for court judgments. Indeed, in some jurisdictions which recognise court judgments from only a limited number of countries - China being an obvious example - arbitration followed by enforcement under the New York Convention will be the only effective means of making a recovery from an entity with its domicile or assets located there. Download the publication here.