John D. Kimball and Noe S. Hamra ●
A recent consolidated arbitration conducted under the rules of the Society of Maritime Arbitrators, Inc. (“SMA”) highlights several advantages of SMA arbitration for maritime and transportation disputes. The case is The M/V Della, SMA No. 4526 (2026). The dispute arose out of back-to-back booking notes for the carriage of approximately 10,000 to 12,000 metric tons of bagged polyester pellets from Taichung, Taiwan, to the United States, with one booking note between Centurion MPP Pte Ltd. (“Centurion”), as disponent owner, and Industrial Maritime Carriers, LLC (“IMC”), as charterer. There was a second booking note between IMC and DYLO, Inc. (“DYLO”), as sub-charterer.
The consolidation procedure in the SMA Rules was particularly important. Section 2 of the SMA Rules provides for consolidation of arbitrations before a single panel of three arbitrators when disputes arise under two or more contracts subject to the SMA Rules and involve common questions of fact or law, or substantially involve the same transaction or series of transactions. Section 2 provides for the panel to hear and decide the disputes and issue final and binding awards in the consolidated cases. In this matter, Centurion, IMC, and DYLO agreed to consolidate their disputes because the two booking notes were back-to-back and the claims involved many of the same facts and legal issues.
The consolidated hearings and briefing produced a more efficient and commercially coherent result than parallel proceedings would have offered. The same panel was able to decide Centurion’s claim against IMC and IMC’s pass-through claim against DYLO in a single proceeding, reducing the risk of inconsistent factual findings or conflicting rulings across separate arbitrations. Witnesses for all three parties testified and documents were produced by all parties. Consolidation of the arbitrations was especially important for IMC as the middle party in a pass-through situation.
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