PS Chellaram & Co Limited v China Ocean Shipping Company

The parties to this matter before the High Court of Australia were P.S. Chellaram & Co Limited (the applicant) and China Ocean Shipping Company and Five Star Shipping & Agency Company Pty Limited (the respondents). The applicant sought special leave to appeal a decision concerning a dispute related to the carriage of goods.

The legal issues before the court involved three main areas of contention: a time bar, the interpretation and application of a Himalaya clause, and a third, unspecified issue. The applicant's argument regarding the time bar was particularly focused on the importance of the object of a contract for the carriage of goods, drawing on observations from *The New York Star*. Specifically, the applicant contended that the commercial expectations and objective intentions of the parties would not have encompassed the delivery of goods without the surrender of the bill of lading.

The applicant argued that the object of the contract, as evidenced by the bill of lading itself which stated that one bill must be surrendered duly endorsed in exchange for the goods, was fundamentally different from the clause considered in *The New York Star*, where surrender was at the carrier's option. The applicant submitted that the court's recognition of the contract's object was essential to giving effect to the parties' commercial expectations and objective intentions. The applicant referred to the judgment of Gleeson CJ at page 57 concerning the time bar.