In the year under review, reported Canadian maritime law decisions dealt with a broad gamut of maritime law and not principally with questions of jurisdiction as in the past.

1. Monk Corp. v. Island Fertilizers Ltd.1

This is one more decision increasing what was previously considered the limited jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Canada at the expense of provincial jurisdiction. In the case at hand certain obligations of a buyer under a sale of goods contract were deemed subject to federal law and jurisdiction. The contract of sale was between the seller in Montreal and the buyer in Prince Edward Island (“P.E.I.”) of a quantity of urea, which the seller had earlier purchased from the U.S.S.R. The seller had also arranged for the carriage of the goods by ship and was in fact the charterer. Neither the previous Russian seller nor the ocean carrier were parties to the action, nor was the contract of transport (the charterparty) at issue. The terms of sale were “CIF/FO” (cost, insurance & freight/free out), which means that the sales price includes the cost of goods in the U.S.S.R., marine insurance to the port of discharge in P.E.I. and freight to P.E.I. The buyer, for his part, is obliged to discharge the ship at his risk and expense and within certain delays. The buyer, however, refused to pay (i) for excess urea it discharged and delivered to itself, (ii) for demurrage (extra time at discharge) and (iii) for renting shore cranes to discharge the ship. The sole question to be considered was whether the Federal Court of Canada had jurisdiction to hear the seller’s three claims.