AGA Partners successfully represented a large agri trading company in a dispute with a major Turkish oil manufacturer in London arbitration. The dispute arose under USD2 million contract for the supply of sunflower seeds to Turkey.

The dispute concerned the buyer’s wrongful refusal to accept sunflower seeds supplied. The buyer based his rejection on the presence of poisonous seeds of ambrosia in the cargo. The Client had no other choice than to sell the rejected cargo in the market and seek recovery of a price difference as well as demurrage and logistics costs.

After several months of proceedings, AGA Partners team has successfully proved that rejection of the cargo was wrongful and that our Client was entitled to receive compensation of his damages.  

The arbitral tribunal satisfied our Client’s claim covering a price difference and other damages arisen due to resale of goods and further awarded our Client compensation of arbitration and legal costs.

Partner Iryna Moroz commented the case:

“This was a complex quality dispute, involving quality analyses from different laboratories and raising the issue of the contract interpretation: what quality characteristics were agreed by the parties in the contract and how these are to be finally determined?

But the crucial question to be determined in this case was whether the excess of poisonous seeds if any, entitled buyer to reject the goods under the contract. Our team managed to prove that excess of ambrosia would not be a breach, giving rise to buyer’s right of rejection, thus making buyer’s refusal of the goods wrongful.”  

The AGA Partners team was led by partners Iryna Moroz and Ivan Kasynyuk, with support from senior associate Dmytro Koval, and associates Viktoria Tolochko and Yelyzaveta Holovan.