This is a commentary on Supplytime 2017, and also Supplytime 89 and Supplytime 2005. I hope that it will also be useful to those dealing with charterers’ forms for offshore vessels. The commentary was expected to be published in hard covers by Sweet and Maxwell, but will now be made available to be downloaded as a series of pdf files from this page.
I will be tidying up what I have written as far as I can without further long delays before the work is available, but it will be longer and less polished than if it had been copy-edited by Sweet and Maxwell. Also, there will be no indexes. I hope that the arrangement of the work will make it possible to locate the discussion of any specific provision or topic.
- Chapter A is intended to provide the legal background, both giving the necessary concepts of English law to those whose background is with a different legal system, and also explaining my own approach to questions about the interpretation of contractual wordings which are debated among English lawyers.
- Chapter B provides the commercial background, including the “factual matrix” in the context of which the contractual language is to be interpreted.
- Chapter C deals with the definitions which appear before clause 1 in Supplytime 2017.
- Chapters 1-42 deal with the numbered clauses of Supplytime 2017 (chapter 1 discussing clause 1, and so on).
- Chapters 43-44 deal with two matters which appeared in previous versions of Supplytime but are omitted from Supplytime 2017, General Average (Chapter 43) and the both-to-blame collision clause (Chapter 44).
Within each chapter the discussion usually follows the order of the wording in the Supplytime 2017 clause. There are comprehensive cross-references to other locations in the work. (Since I will be tidying up and uploading chapters in groups, I will be able to complete the cross-references to chapters I have already uploaded with specific paragraph numbers, but I will not be doing this with references to the chapters which I have not yet tidied.)
I am grateful to the partners of Hill Dickinson LLP for supporting this project for as long as they did, to those who have given permission for reproduction or quotations from their copyright documents, to the parties to the arbitration reported at Appendix V, and to Vivien Rivett, who typed the drafts of the commentary. I particularly wish to thank those who have commented on drafts of chapters, including Malcolm Entwistle and Lewis Moore of Hill Dickinson and Ian Perrott. All the errors which remain are my sole responsibility.
Readers should note that since January 2019 I have not been in a position to be made aware in a systematic way of developments in the law. The draft has been updated to take account of new authorities which have come to my attention since then, but (to the extent that anyone might wish to rely on the work at all) they should not rely on it to take account of developments after the end of 2018.
Although I have taken care in stating the law as I believe it to be, nothing on this website or in the commentary made available is intended to establish a relationship of lawyer and client between myself and any reader of the work, and I will not be liable for any errors in the work, or for any losses which anyone may suffer as a result of relying on the work in any way.
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I will be uploading chapters as and when I have tidied them, and I hope I will be uploading a chapter every few weeks. I began with Chapters A, B and C, which are needed for the discussion in Chapter 14, and then Chapter 14, which discusses the knock-for-knock arrangement and the exclusion of consequential damages. I have now uploaded Chapters 15-19, which deal with the rest of the allocation of liabilities under Supplytime. I intend next to upload the Chapters dealing with the clauses from clause 20 onwards, many of which are standard BIMCO clauses which appear in other charterparty forms.
To access the chapters please click on the “Chapter” or “Appendix” below, and on the page you will reach please scroll to the bottom and then click on the text below the pdf icon:
Chapter A — Concepts of English Law
Chapter B — Background: Commercial, Insurance and Legal
Chapter C — Definitions
Chapter 14 — Liabilities and Indemnities
Chapter 15 — Pollution
Chapter 16 — Wreck Removal
Chapter 17 — Insurance
Chapter 18 — Saving of Life and Salvage
Chapter 19 — Liens, and a further provision on liabilities and indemnities
Chapter 20 — Subletting, delegation of performance, assignment of hire and mortgages on the vessel
Chapter 21 — Substitute vessel, and “which shall not be unreasonably withheld”
Appendix IV — The Aveiro
Please be aware that when you access a chapter the download monitor on this site will record the IP address of your computer. This enables the monitor to count the number of separate persons who access each file; it does not enable me to identify you as an individual.