OCEMA Establishes ADR Process for Demurrage/Detention Claims
As previously reported, FMC Commissioner Dye issued a report last December in the agency’s Fact-Finding Investigation 28. One of the issues raised by Commissioner Dye in her report was the lack of any clear method for NVOCCs and shippers to challenge demurrage and detention assessments in these situations. A number of the major ocean carriers have attempted to address this issue through their membership in the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association (“OCEMA”), as OCEMA recently published a set of guidelines for their members suggesting that the establishment of a transparent dispute resolution process for this purpose.More specifically, on April 1, 2019, OCEMA published a set of best practices by which its member lines would identify points of contact for disputes, describe the type of information required to process a claim and establish timelines. With that goal, OCEMA encouraged its members to cover the following points in their detention and demurrage rules.
Provide points of contact for shippers to use for detention and demurrage disputes (names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses).
- Describe what factual and documentary information is required to be provided in order to make a detention and/or demurrage dispute claim.
iii. Define the timeframes in which a dispute must be raised and within which a response is to be provided.
- The individual OCEMA members’ complete dispute resolution processes webpages are to be linked to the OCEMA website – www.ocema.org, so that the process can be readily accessible.
The members of OCEMA are the following lines:
CMA CGM
COSCO SHIPPING
Evergreen
Hapag-Lloyd
Hyundai Merchant Marine
Maersk Line
Mediterranean Shipping Co.
Ocean Network Express
Orient Overseas Container Line
Wan Hai Lines
ZIM