Ocean Oct 10, 2026 · 8 min read

Demurrage and detention fights escalate: Samsung wants $186m from CMA CGM, and the FMC warns Cosco

Samsung seeks $186m from CMA CGM, and the FMC threatens Cosco with up to $16.7m over a late $24,328 award. Samsung Electronics America wants at least $186m from CMA CGM, according to FreightWaves. Its complaint to the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), the US shipping regulator, says the carrier ran up about $148m in demurrage and detention (fees for containers kept too long) by failing to move boxes inland. CMA CGM wants the case dismissed. The same week, the FMC told Cosco it could face $3.3m to $16.7m in penalties for paying a $24,328 award 223 days late, according to The Loadstar. Our view: ignoring these rulings now costs carriers more than paying. We expect more big-shipper claims by end of Q1 2027.

Samsung wants $186m from CMA CGM, and the FMC threatens Cosco with up to $16.7m: US container-fee disputes now carry real money
Samsung Electronics America has asked the US Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to order CMA CGM to pay it at least $186m, according to FreightWaves. Most of that, about $148m, is disputed demurrage and detention. Demurrage is the daily fee for a container left at the terminal too long. Detention is the daily fee for keeping the carrier’s container outside the terminal too long. Together they are known as D&D.
In the same week, the FMC told Cosco it could face penalties of $3.3m to $16.7m. Its offence was paying a $24,328 award 223 days late, according to The Loadstar.
These are two very different cases. One is a giant claim that has only just been filed. The other is a small award that the carrier eventually paid. Read together, we think they say the same thing. D&D disputes in the US are no longer a cost of doing business that carriers can wait out. Big shippers are suing for nine figures, and the regulator is making late payment more expensive than the original bill.

What Samsung is claiming

The case is about “store-door” shipments. Under a store-door bill of lading, the carrier takes responsibility for the box all the way from the overseas origin, through a US port, to the customer’s inland door. According to FreightWaves, CMA CGM began handling Samsung containers this way in January 2020. Samsung alleges the problems started around the middle of that year.
Samsung’s account, as reported by FreightWaves, runs like this. CMA CGM repeatedly failed to move containers inland on time. Delays the carrier was responsible for generated charges, which Samsung then paid. Samsung says it paid more than 121,000 demurrage, detention and related charges. That breaks down into more than 26,000 demurrage charges and more than 94,000 detention-type charges.
Samsung also alleges that CMA CGM used “cargo and finance holds” to force payment of disputed invoices. A hold stops the box being released until the bill is paid. It further alleges that the carrier converted some store-door moves to container-yard service without approval. Under container-yard (CY) service, the carrier’s job ends at the port or rail ramp, and the customer has to arrange the final leg itself.
One example in the complaint shows what that can cost. A container shipped from Busan through the Port of Long Beach to The Colony, Texas, in 2021 allegedly ran up about $162,800 in rail storage charges after its delivery was switched from store-door to CY.
The money claim has three parts, according to FreightWaves: about $148m in disputed charges, at least $8.1m in extra inland and mitigation costs, and about $30m in prejudgment interest. On those figures, the $148m works out at a little over $1,200 for each charge Samsung says it paid. Samsung relies on Section 41102(c) of the Shipping Act, which requires carriers to keep “just and reasonable” practices. It also asks the FMC to order CMA CGM to “cease the allegedly unlawful practices.”
CMA CGM rejects all of it. In an email to FreightWaves, a company representative said “CMA CGM disputes Samsung Electronics America’s allegations of Shipping Act violations” and that the carrier had filed its response asking for dismissal. The carrier blames “the exceptional operating conditions of the Covid-19 pandemic.” It added: “As the proceedings are ongoing, we will not comment further on the substance of the dispute.” WorldCargo News also reports that CMA CGM has asked the FMC to dismiss the complaint.
None of Samsung’s allegations has been tested yet. But the scale stands out. At $186m, the claim is about eight times the $22.67m penalty the FMC imposed on MSC earlier this year.

Why a $24,328 award could cost Cosco $16.7m

The Cosco case is small in dollars but sharp in message. According to The Loadstar, Cosco was ordered to pay $24,328 over improper detention and demurrage invoicing. This was a reparations award, meaning money a carrier must pay back to the party it overcharged. Cosco took 223 days to pay it.
The FMC then released a letter, attributed to chair Laura DiBella. It said that “A respondent appears to have persistently failed to comply with a final reparations order for many months”. The agency added that “The commission is empowered to impose civil penalties for non-payment of a reparations award,” according to The Loadstar. It said Cosco had been reminded extensively, and that this “raises the question whether these potential violations of the statute were knowing and wilful”.
The arithmetic explains the size of the threat. The law treats each day of non-compliance as a separate violation. The base penalties are $5,000 per violation, or $25,000 if wilful and knowing. After inflation adjustment, those stand at $14,988 and $74,943, The Loadstar reports. Multiply by 223 days and you get roughly $3.3m at the low end and $16.7m at the top. That is between about 137 and 687 times the original award.
The Loadstar calls the move further evidence that the Trump administration is less keen on bowing to corporate interests than had been expected. Sources have told the paper that giving the FMC “teeth”, and using them, would likely make smaller shippers more determined to pursue claims over pandemic-era charges. One litigator told it that for smaller firms, the cost of bringing a claim was often more than they were likely to recoup.

This is the third push this year

The Cosco letter does not stand alone. In February, the FMC fined MSC $22.67m for Shipping Act violations, according to FreightWaves. That total included $13.145m for overcharging D&D on non-operating reefers in 2021, on about 23% of those bills. It also included $9.46m for leaving reefer late fees out of its published tariff, and $65,000 for billing customs agents who were not involved in moving the cargo. In June testimony to Congress, DiBella said the MSC penalty had been paid in full to the US Treasury.
In May, Maersk agreed to a $1.9m civil penalty, according to FreightWaves. The FMC said Maersk had billed detention to third parties who had not agreed to its bills of lading, service contracts or tariffs. Maersk did not admit a violation, but it agreed to stop the practice and refund or waive affected charges.
The courts have backed the regulator too. In July the FMC announced that a federal appeals court in Washington had “unanimously denied all aspects of the petition” brought by Evergreen. The FMC had found Evergreen’s detention fees unreasonable because a trucker could not return equipment during a holiday port closure. The court affirmed that the burden is on carriers to show, with evidence, how their fees compensate them for costs.

The rules have tilted toward the payer

Three rules make D&D invoices easier to challenge than they once were.
First, the test. Back in 2020, the FMC said D&D charges should serve their main purpose of “incentivizing the movement of cargo and promoting freight fluidity,” according to FreightWaves. A fee charged when a box physically cannot move fails that test.
Second, the burden of proof. Under the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 (OSRA), the carrier has to prove that its D&D charges are reasonable, according to the FMC’s charge complaint guidance. Anyone who paid or was invoiced can file, including shippers, consignees, truckers and other third parties.
Third, time. The Loadstar reported on 22 September that there is no three-year statute of limitations on charge complaints for fees assessed on or after 16 June 2022. “From now on, there’s no statute of limitations,” a litigation source told the paper.
People are using the process. “To date in FY 2026, the FMC has received 195 charge complaints,” DiBella told the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation in June. She said that was on pace with the previous year.

What it means for forwarders, NVOs and shippers

Our read is that carriers’ D&D exposure is now an open liability, not a closed chapter. For forwarders and NVOs (non-vessel operating common carriers, the forwarders that issue their own bills of lading), that has four practical effects.
Old paperwork has value. The Loadstar cites Husch Blackwell advising shippers and NVOs to review their D&D charges and keep full invoice and bill of lading records. Any charge from mid-2022 onward may still be open to challenge.
Store-door contracts deserve a closer read. Samsung’s case is about a carrier allegedly switching door moves to CY without consent and leaving the customer to pay rail storage. Anyone booking carrier haulage to inland US points, especially transpacific cargo railed from Los Angeles and Long Beach to Texas and the Midwest, should check what the contract says about who pays when the inland leg slips.
Holds are a pressure point. If the FMC accepts Samsung’s argument that cargo and finance holds were used to force payment of disputed bills, carriers will find that tactic harder to use against smaller customers too.
Awards will get paid faster. The Cosco letter tells every carrier that sitting on a small award can turn it into a seven- or eight-figure problem. Forwarders who win a charge complaint should expect quicker payment.
There is a counter-risk. Carriers facing open-ended claims may push for tighter free time, higher daily rates, or stricter dispute windows in 2027 contracts. That is our expectation, not something any carrier has announced.

What happens next

The Samsung complaint is at the earliest stage, and the FMC has not ruled on CMA CGM’s request to dismiss it. The Cosco matter rests on a letter, not a final penalty.
Our calls: Cosco resolves the penalty threat with a settlement in the low millions, rather than fighting a wilful finding, by the end of Q1 2027. Samsung’s complaint survives the dismissal request at least in part by mid-2027, and the two sides settle well below $186m before any final award. And at least one more large importer files a D&D claim of $10m or more over pandemic-era charges before the end of Q1 2027.

Sources