Second-hand Ship Trading In The Seller's Obligations, Breach Of Contract And The Buyer's Relief,

With respect to the contract of the purchases and sales of second hand ship, the most common standard form used at present in the market is "Norweigian Sale Form"(the "NSF"). The obligations of the buyers are more than ten items under the "NSF". After summing up the author of this paper thinks that there are four major obligations for the buyers: to undertake the inspection of the ship, to warrant purchased ship free of all encumbrances at the time of delivery, to notify the Classification Society the defects of the ship and to deliver the ship.Afloat inspection and drydocking inspection shall be carried out before the ship is delivered. Afloat inspection has two categories: afloat inspection before and after the conclusion of the contract. Whether to inspect the ship first or conclude the contract first is not a legal question, but a commercial question. The purpose of drydocking inspection is to make sure that the buyer shall inspect the actual conditions of the ship's bottom and underwater parts below the deepest load line. If the broken or defective so as to affect the ship's class are found, the buyer shall only demand the seller to make such defects good to the satisfaction of the Clean Certificate of Class rather than cancel the contract. The buyer shall perform his right to cancel the contract only after the expiration of the canceling date because of the ship's mending.The seller shall undertake an obligation of warrantee, that is, the seller warrants that the ship at the time of delivery is free of all charters, encumbrances, mortgages and maritime liens or any other debts whatsoever. This is called "Encumbrances under NSF". The buyer is mostly affected by maritime liens in the above encumbrances. According to the provision that "maritime liens shall not be extinguished by virtue of the transfer of the ownership of the ship and shall not be registered", it is impossible or difficult to carry out second-hand ships sale and purchase. Some countries have set up procedures for interpellation of maritime liens. However, with respect to the problem that whether the ship is the subject matter of maritime lien or not after it is lost in particularly it is discharged to steel, there are some differentviews This paper think the so-called "the ship is lost" has two different concepts.The seller shall undertake the warrantee of quality of the ship provided and should notify Classification Society any condition that once Classification Society knows such condition, it would cancel or make recommendations on the class of the ship before the seller delivers the ship to the buyer. The problem for the seller is that it is difficult to judge which conditions should be notified to Classification Society. In general comprehension, it means that which conditions are enough serious to affect Classification Society's canceling or making recommendations on the class. However, it is not an easy thing to judge the criterion of "enough serious". This kind of condition is called "new condition" in the World Horizon case. In relation to the period of this "new condition" notice made by the seller, second-hand ships sale and purchase contract only limits to the time "prior to delivery of vessel" but do not provide clearly the starting point of the time when the buyer should perform his notice. Therefore, it arouse many debates in practice. This paper think it is from the time when Classification Society begins to inspect the ship for the last time before the conclusion of the contract.The delivery of the ship is the fina step to perform the second-hand ships sale and purchase contract and it is of the most importance. The "NSF' emphasizes the point that the seller should render Notice of Readiness (NOR) to the buyer prior to the delivery of the ship. With respect to the problem that whether the ship is ready for delivery at the time of rendering NOR, the judge in Britain thinks that the ship should be ready in "actual" time rather than be ready in any "prospective" time. In addition, this paper explains the differences between...