Charles Debattista

Practice Areas

• All areas of dry shipping

o Charterparties

o Bills of Lading, and other Cargo Documents

o Contracts of Affreightment

• Commodities and International Trade

o Sale of goods contracts for bulk commodities, dry and wet

o Sale of goods in containers

o Incoterms 2020

• Trade Finance

o Letters of Credit

o Bank Guarantees and Performance Bonds

• International Arbitration

o Sits as arbitrator in the above areas

o Acts as Counsel before Tribunals in the above areas

o Litigation arising out of arbitrations, particularly challenges to Awards

Career

• 1978 (Malta); 2005 (England and Wales)

• Charles has extensive experience:

o As Counsel with full rights of audience in all Courts in England and Wales

o As Arbitrator in arbitrations seated in London and elsewhere

o As Expert on points of English Law before foreign Courts and arbitral tribunals

• After graduating first in Malta and then at Oxford, Charles started his career lecturing at the University of Southampton in 1979, taking a Chair in Commercial Law and heading the University’s Institute of Maritime Law for six years. Charles started an energetic practice as arbitrator in 2002. He joined Stone Chambers in 2004 and moved into full-time practice at the Bar when he left academic life in 2011. Charles was Head of 36 Stone between 2019 and 2022 and is now Joint Head (with Rachel Toney).

• Much published across his practice areas, Charles’s most recent substantial work was Debattista on Bills of Lading in Commodity Trade, 4th ed, Bloomsbury Professional, with Francis Hornyold-Strickland.

Professional Memberships

Memberships

• LMAA, Supporting Member

• Chartered Institute of Arbitrators

• Baltic Exchange

• British Maritime Law Association

• Middle Temple

• Shanghai International Arbitration Centre

• Singapore Chamber of Maritime Arbitrators

• Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre

Personal

Leighton Park School, Reading; Royal University of Malta (1977 LLD); St Edmund Hall, Oxford (1979 BA; 1983 MA; Rhodes Scholar).

Languages Spoken

Languages: English, Italian, Maltese.

Work Highlights

Represented a steel trader in a cargo claim in the High Court where a carrier issued bills of lading known to contain inaccurate weights when compared with VGM values. Leading a junior from another chambers opposite a Silk.

Represented a commodity trader in a High Court challenge to the jurisdiction of an arbitral tribunal under section 67 of the Arbitration Act 1996. Leading a junior from 36 Stone.

Chaired a tribunal brought under the rules of the Malta Arbitration Centre in respect of disputes arising from the multi-million Euro refit of a superyacht. The arbitration included a claim and a sizeable counterclaim with several interlocutory applications being dealt with between start and finish.

Sole arbitrator in a large LMAA arbitration relating to laytime and demurrage. The matter raised a number of important substantive issues but also several problematic procedural problems given that one of the parties was situated in a warzone and could not consequently participate in the arbitration as it might otherwise have done.