Mailbox mix-up

A charterer invited tenders for a long term time charter. The Member, a ship broker, sent his principal’s bid via an industry message system to the charterers mailbox in the United States. The bid was, of course, commercially sensitive. The Member, as is normal, used an address code for the charterer but unfortunately the American system interpreted the code as a mailing list. The principal’s bid was therefore sent to a number of other owners. The principal did not secure the business and claimed his bid was under-cut as a result of its inadvertent publication.