Contracts: time and voyage charterparties and their hybrid forms

Abstract

The general approach of English contract law is generally to decline to define the contract for the parties: the parties are free to set out the terms of their contract as they wish, and the law is slow to modify their bargain by implying terms or obligations into it. Nevertheless, the law has developed to recognise two well-defined categories of charterparty to a degree where it is now difficult or even impossible to depart from that framework. There is recognition in literature that the time or voyage charterparty paradigm is not immutable; but courts, when offered the opportunity to recognise the sui generis character of a particular charterparty, have consistently declined to do so, reverting instead to the safe paradigm. This chapter considers the evidence for and against the existence of hybrid charterparties in practice, and concludes that the categories developed through practice have become so firm as to be immutable.