Last December, in an article in this column entitled “Time is Money: Allocating the Cost of Maritime Delays,” I provided, among other things, an overview of container demurrage and detention delays emanating from the pandemic’s impact on the maritime-supply chain. Since then, Congress enacted and the president signed into law on June 16 the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (OSRA 2022) that attempts to rein in the attendant charges for those delays (amidst numerous other provisions), and the Federal Maritime Commission’s (FMC’s) chief administrative law judge (ALJ) has issued a decision construing the FMC’s interpretative ruling about the enforceability of delay-related charges.

The enormous demand for goods during the pandemic significantly disrupted the east-west flow of containers, creating enormous backlogs in the movement of container ships and containers in U.S. ports. Meanwhile, more and more shippers are coming forward with complaints about what they view as staggering container demurrage and detention charges. The road ahead promises to be bumpy as ocean carriers, shippers and government regulators formulate the standards that will govern the assessment and enforcement of these charges to smooth the way ahead for the return to shipping normalcy.