The Danish trustee for Norwegian-Danish operator The Containership Company (TCC) is to appeal rulings in the US courts that it cannot sue shippers for failing to fulfil their contracted box volume requirements.
Last month, US district court judge Andrew Carter backed up a 2016 decision in the bankruptcy courts that cargo owners were excused from their obligation to tender cargoes when the company ended its trans-Pacific service in 2011.
There were four voyages left to be carried out when TCC filed for bankruptcy.
The company was founded in Norway 2009, with operations from China to Los Angeles starting in April 2010.
The service was discontinued the following year and Danish subsidiary The Containership Company A/S, TCC’s principal operating entity, filed for reorganisation.
The Danish administrator, law firm Bech-Bruun, has been pursuing claims against dozens of customers who allegedly failed to meet their volume obligations.
TCC credited customers
TCC has argued that the company properly made up for the suspension of its service by crediting customers with what they would have shipped on the four cancelled journeys.
But in his 2016 recommendations to a US district court judge, bankruptcy judge James Garrity disagreed with the liquidator's insistence that the shippers were required to distribute their shipments evenly over the course of the contract.
TCC said it considers the judgement to be wrong as a matter of law and based on an incorrect understanding of the underlying facts.
"For instance, the district court found that the defendants could all have tendered their remaining cargo on the last four sailings," it added.
"This completely disregards the fact that the combined space available on those last sailings together was only about 10% of the combined MQC [minimum quantity commitment] shortfall, the service contracts expressly required the shippers to tender their MQC evenly as far as possible during the contract term and that containers had to be tendered 14 days in advance and hardly none were tendered on the last vessels."
TCC will now appeal the judgment to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Shippers covered by the case include Apex Maritime, US Pacific Transport, OEC Shipping Los Angeles, Translink Shipping, Argos Freight and Pudong Trans USA.
