CONDITIONS OF THE LIABILITY OF THE CONSIGNEE FOR FREIGHT CHARGE IN VOYAGE CHARTER CONTRACT

Abstract

A voyage charter is the type of contract of affreightment in which the carrier undertakes to carry the shipper’s goods by assigning partial or whole place on the ship in return for freight. Due to the nature of the synallagmatic of the voyage contract, the carrier undertakes to carry the cargo and deliver it to the consignee, while the shipper undertakes to pay the freight in return. As a rule, the debtor of the freight is the shipper who is the party of the contract. However, in charter contracts in which the delivery of the goods to a third party is agreed upon, it is possible that the consignee has also contractual obligations. When the third party who is not the contracting party will responsible for the contractual obligations was regulated in Art. 1203 of the Turkish Commercial Code. According to the regulation, the consignee must request the delivery of the goods first and it must be stated that the consignee is responsible for the contractual obligations in the contract of affreightment, bill of lading, or other transport documents which is the basis of the delivery request.

In this study, a comprehensive review of voyage charters and their types, we examined the conditions under which the consignee will be responsible for the freight arising from the contract in detail.