Samsung Electronics America’s relentless pursuit of liners for their actions during the pandemic era has moved onto its biggest claim to date.
Having lodged cases with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) in Washington DC against COSCO, OOCL, SM Line and ZIM, the American affiliate of the Korean manufacturing giant has now gone after compatriot HMM, claiming the carrier imposed around 96,000 detention and demurrage charges which it labelled “erroneous” in a 24-page document.
From around the middle of 2020, Samsung Electronics America claims HMM “repeatedly and chronically” failed to maintain just and reasonable practices in connection with its inland transportation obligations, including failing to timely remove containers from US marine and intermodal terminals and failing to timely deliver containers to their designated inland locations.
During that same period Samsung Electronics America maintains HMM began charging “dramatically increasing amounts” for alleged demurrage and detention charges resulting from HMM’s inland transportation failures.
The FMC has been besieged with record numbers of shipper complaints during the period of liner shipping’s greatest era of profits. The commission’s powers were strengthened two years ago with the passing of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act.