MV "Great Talent", loaded with 65, 251.50 tons of bulk soybeans and with clean bill of lading, set sail from BARCARENA, Brazil on 1 July, 2018. The ship arrived at Zhoushan wharf on 19 August 2018, and started discharged at 26 September. The consignee of the bill of lading was Jiangsu Beidahuang Oil and Fat Co., Ltd., but the goods were directly discharged to the warehouse of the designated factory of Zhejiang Wuchan Chemical Co., Ltd., the downstream buyer of Beidahuang. During discharge, Zhejiang Wuchan Chemical claimed to have found soybean heat damage, and Jiangsu Beidahuang immediately required the shipowner to provide a letter of guarantee, and after days of communication, Beidahuang finally agreed to accept a LOU in the amount of 25 million yuan. The ship completed discharge on 11 October and left the port on the 12th. In August 2019, Beidahuang filed a lawsuit against the shipowner in the Ningbo Maritime Court, and in the lawsuit, Beidahuang submitted the data of customs inspection. According to the data of Zhoushan Customs, the heat loss rate of the captioned soybeans was 12.33%. Regarding the amount of loss, Beidahuang entrusted Zhoushan CCIC to issue a "damage appraisal report", in which the assess amount of damages was RMB 11,557,326 yuan.

      The defendant, Great Talent Shipping Limited, entrusted our lawyers Judy C Z Lin, Colin Y F Yang to handle the case. After the discovery of the damage, our lawyers urgently intervened in the case, at the end, Great Talent Shipping was ruled to compensate Beidahuang Company the loss of goods in amount of RMB 7,663,410 plus interest, and rejected the plaintiff's other claims. At the best efforts of our firm, we reduced a great amount of loss for the client (reduced amount was about 3.5 million yuan) and achieved a satisfied result.

       The typical significance of this case: the consignee should bear responsibility for the loss of goods caused by the failure to discharge cargo in time due to its own reasons.