Didymi Corporation v Atlantic Lines and Navigation Co Inc ‘The Didymi’: CA 1988

A contract contained a clause covering the rate of hire of a 5 year time charter: ’30(1) The … speed and fuel consumption of the vessel as stipulated in this charter-party are representations by the owners. Should the actual performance of the vessel taken on an average basis throughout the duration of this charter-party show any failure to satisfy one or more of such representations, the hire shall be equitably decreased by an amount to be mutually agreed between owners and charterers …’ The Court asked whether this provided sufficient certainty to give rise to a binding obligation, a substantive obligation of the parties, rather than a procedural question of how the substantive right might be determined. It was argued that the clause was not enforceable, because it was an agreement to agree.
Held: The substantive obligation was sufficiently spelt out by the reference to ‘equitably’ and that the provision for mutual agreement was no more than procedural mechanics.
Bingham LJ
[1988] 2 Lloyds Rep 108
England and Wales
Citing:
AppliedSudbrook Trading Estate Ltd v Eggleton HL 1982
The grantors of an option, which contained a machinery for fixing the price, had refused to appoint a valuer and that made it impossible for the contractual machinery for the valuation of the option price to work. The House of Lords held that the . .

Cited by:
CitedDavies Middleton and Davies Ltd v Toyo Engineering Corporation CA 29-Aug-1997
Parties to a dispute agreed a way of resolving issues before arbitration. One party then sought to say that the agreement was void for uncertainty, being an agreement to agree.
Held: The agreement merely set a mechansim for resolving the . .

Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 22 July 2021; Ref: scu.188392