ICC Digital Library Forum

One of the additional conditions states 'Shipment to be made per The Institute Classification Clause for vessel type & age as defined in list of vessels per fax ref no. RM123456 (except J Prosper).

Could we treat it as a non-documentary condition?

There is insufficient information here to determine the vessel type or age requirement, unless the L/C includes a list of acceptable vessels or similar. The exhortation to check such details is not qualified by reference to a document. Therefore this is a non-documentary condition and should be treated as such.

Laurence A. J. Bacon

To understand what is meant by classification of cargo ships, please refer to our comments on 14th June 2001 on the Query "Unclear Issuers" presented by Mr. Serenachang of Malaysia.

The Institute Classification Clause is used to give the underwriters access to the particulars of the classification of the ship carrying the cargo on which the premium is then charged.

It is not appropriate to ask a document checker to look at the terms and conditions in an insurance document to check for the compliance of this classification clause, because this is beyond the banking practice to check documents "on their face". There is no need to look at the terms and conditions in a bill of lading, a charter party or an insurance document.

Unless the document checkers are specially trained for this, they may not understand the insurance jargons such as "general average", "sue and labour", "privity of the insured", "constructive total loss", "proximate cause", "inherent vice", "Inchimaree Clause" and the like.

The proper way to handle this is to ask the beneficiary to produce a certificate to this effect.

Otherwise, naming the requirements without naming a document for the document checker to check there-against will be deemed as a non-documentary condition, which would be ignored according to sub Article 13 (c) of UCP 500.

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[edited 4/2/02 8:47:34 PM]