'Bills of Lading Incorporating Charterparties' published by Hart Publishing

21 January 2015

Vessels very frequently serve under a long chain of charterparties and sub-charterparties. When this is the case, the legal issues involved are more convoluted than they might at first seem

Incorporation clauses are commonplace in bills of lading used in the tramp trade – where ships do not have a fixed schedule or published ports of call – as a result of the desire to make the web of contracts operate seamlessly. The extent to which the terms of the charterparty can be carried across to the bill of lading has, over the centuries, been hotly disputed in many jurisdictions.

In Bills of Lading Incorporating Charterparties, Dr Melis Özdel combines the intellectual challenge of the seemingly basic rules of incorporation with the legal and practical issues concerning shipping, international trade and conflict of laws and jurisdiction.

In so doing, she draws together important and essential links between this issue and the fundamentals of international trade, shipping, arbitration and conflict of laws and jurisdiction.

Recent years have seen an increasing interaction between the rules of incorporation and the enforcement of forum selection clauses in bills of lading, and in this new monograph, Dr Özdel discusses and analyses the legal and practical issues under English and US law surrounding the incorporation of charterparty terms into bills of lading.

Find out more about Bills of Lading Incoporating Charterparties by Dr Melis Özdel on the Hart Publishing website.