Pirates and punctuation

   Here’s a court decision from the England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court) that might be used to enliven a classroom discussion about punctuation (Osmium Shipping Corp v Cargill International SA [2012] EWHC 571 (Comm)).
   The issue was whether the off-hire clause in the charter party agreement for the ship that the company hired applied when pirates seized and held it for 45 days.
   In 2008, Cargill chartered the Panamax bulk carrier Captain Stefanos from Osmium to carry coal from South Africa to Italy.
   The ship was hijacked off the coast of Somalia on Sept. 21 and released Dec. 6 after paying a substantial ransom.
   The court was asked to decide whether the ship was off-hire while subject to the hijacking.
   The court said “whilst there was a difference of emphasis between the parties, as might be expected, there was no real difference between them as to the principles to be applied in construing the charter party. As many authorities state, hire is payable continuously unless the charterers can bring themselves within an exception, the onus being on the charterers to do so. Doubt as to the meaning of exceptions is to be resolved in favor of the owners.”
   The owners contended that taken as a whole the charter party “placed the risk of piracy upon the charterers and not upon the owners and that the off-hire clause had to be read with this business purpose and allocation of risk in mind.”
   But the judge said the “wording used, the structure of the clause, its punctuation and its grammar all clearly support the charterers’ submissions.”
   Clause 56 was the part of the agreement dealing with off-hire and it read:

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   “Should the vessel put back whilst on voyage by reason of any accident or breakdown, or in the event of loss of time either in port or at sea or deviation upon the course of the voyage caused by sickness of or accident to the crew or any person onboard the vessel (other than supercargo travelling by request of the Charterers) or by reason of the refusal of the Master or crew to perform their duties, or oil pollution even if alleged, or capture/seizure, or detention or threatened detention by any authority including arrest, the hire shall be suspended from the time of the inefficiency until the vessel is again efficient in the same or equidistant position in Charterers’ option, and voyage resumed therefrom. All extra directly related expenses incurred including bunkers consumed during period of suspended hire shall be for Owner’s account.”
   The court said “the point in dispute turned on the construction of the words ‘capture/seizure’ in clause 56, in the context of the clause and the charter as a whole. The Owners submitted that those words were qualified by the further words ‘by any authority’ and that pirates did not constitute such an authority, whereas the Charterers said that the words were unqualified and a seizure by pirates was an off-hire event.”
   The court found “the structure of the clause, its punctuation and its grammar all clearly support the Charterers’ submissions.”