Vinmar International Ltd v Theresa Navigation SA (The “Atrice”) - QBD (Com Ct)(Tomlinson J) - 9 March 2001

Cargo interests continuing to load ethylene cargo notwithstanding gross and obvious contamination of initial samples - Carrier admitting that vessel was unfit to carry cargo - Whether decision of cargo interests to continue loading was so aberrant as to break chain of causation between carrier’s breach and contamination of balance of cargo

The claimants were the owners of a cargo of 4000 tonnes of ethylene shipped on board the gas carrier Atrice. The defendants were the demise charterers of the Atrice. The claimants brought proceedings against the defendants for damages arising out of damage to their cargo. The defendants admitted that the vessel was unfit to carry the cargo of ethylene, having failed in their duty to exercise due diligence to clean or purge the vessel’s tanks and lines of a previous cargo of butadiene. The defendants’ own expert cargo surveyor said that the extent of the contamination observed during sampling at the initial stage of loading was likely to have exceeded anything which the attending independent surveyor then acting for the cargo interests had previously experienced. However, the defendants sought to pray in aid the grossness of the contamination then observed in support of their contention that the bulk of the loss sustained by the claimants was to be regarded as having been caused by their own decision to continue loading. That was, said the defendants, a decision for which there was no rational basis and which they characterised as reckless, or foolhardy. The defendants said that the decision to continue loading was so aberrant that it had to be regarded as breaking the chain of causal link between the defendants’ admitted breach and the ensuing contamination of the balance of the ethylene parcel thereafter loaded.