President of India v. Metcalfe Shipping Co Ltd
[1969] 3 All ER 1549[1970] 1 QB 289
[1969] 3 WLR 1120
(Judgment by: Fenton Atkinson LJJ)
President of India v
Metcalfe Shipping Co Ltd
Judges:
Lord Denning MR
Edmund Davies
Fenton Atkinson LJJ
Judgment date: 8 October 1969
Judgment by:
Fenton Atkinson LJJ
FENTON ATKINSON LJ . On the particular facts of Calcutta Steamship Co., Ltd v Andrew Weir & Co ([1910] 1 KB at p 770) I would certainly not for a moment say that the actual decision was wrong. But it was a point advanced by Mr Bailhache KC, in his argument for the plaintiffs that the relations between shipowners, charters and shippers respectively are to be determined as a question of fact on the documents and circumstances of each particular case, and on the facts of that case it was plain that, as Hamilton J, put it from the first, the contract for the carriage of these goods was in the terms of the bill of lading given to the shipper Mr Noats, and whatever title to the goods the charterers subsequently acquired they acquired under and on the terms of that bill of lading.
The present case seems to me to be very different. First in time comes the charterparty between the charterers and shipowners which makes full contractual provision for the carriage of these particular goods and their delivery at Madras, and for myself I cannot see why the fact that the sellers of the goods in question took a bill of lading which they held for a short space of time before indorsing it over to the charterers, as they were contractually obliged to do, should affect the charterers' rights under the charterparty, all the more so when there was the without prejudice clause in the charterparty.
It would certainly seem from his speech in Love and Stewart, Ltd v Rawtor Steamship Co., Ltd that Lord Sumner himself would be the last person to treat his judgment in Calcutta v Weir as authority for any such proposition as counsel for the shipowners has presented to us in this court.
I would agree that the appeal fails.