Anti-technicality notice in a time charter
The notice an owner must serve before withdrawing the vessel for late or short payment of hire, and why withdrawing without one is itself a repudiation.
An anti-technicality notice is a contractual notice a shipowner must serve on a time charterer before exercising the right to withdraw the vessel for non-payment of hire, giving the charterer a stated number of banking days to put right a late or short payment. It exists because withdrawal is a drastic remedy that ends the fixture, and because a payment can fall short for reasons as trivial as a bank cut-off time or a mistaken deduction.
The clause is a creature of contract rather than of law: where the charter contains no anti-technicality provision the owner may withdraw on the default itself. Where the charter does require one, the requirement is construed strictly, and an owner that withdraws without serving it is in wrongful withdrawal, which is itself a repudiatory breach exposing the owner to a damages claim for the balance of the period.
The practical questions the full article will cover are how the notice period is counted, what a valid notice must state, whether an owner may serve one in anticipation of a default, what happens when the charterer pays part of the sum demanded within the period, and how the notice interacts with the grace period at NYPE 2015 clause 11(c) and with the renunciation route confirmed in Grand China Logistics v Spar Shipping.