International Business Law, Go

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Carriage of Goods by Sea

Transportation is a key element in todays business world. Along with the sale of goods one must ship them some how to the customer. In cases of international shipment there are many different rules and regulations that the shipper must follow in order to legally transport their goods. When a company ships their goods they generally ship by common carriers, in other words a carrier that transports more than parties goods. If however a party contracts to employ an entire vessel, then that is know as charterparty. The following paper focuses on the Common Carriage and aspects such as bill of lading, the carriers duties under a bill of lading, the carriers immunities, liability limit, time limitations, and third-party rights.
A general ship or a common carrier is a vessel that the owner or operator willing carries goods for more than one person. There are three different types of common carriers. First is a conference line which is an association of seagoing carriers who have joined together to offer common freight rates. Those that chose to ship all or a large share of their cargo through this process receives a discounted rate. Second is an independent line, which is when the vessel has their own rate schedules. Generally, independent lines have a lower rate than that of the conference discounted price. Finally the third aspect of common carrier is tramp vessels which are similar to independent lines by the fact that they have their own rate schedule, but they differ from both in that they don’t operate on established schedules.
The next topic is the bill of lading, which is an instrument issued by an ocean carrier to a shipper that serves as a receipt of the contract of carriage, and as a document of title for the goods. The treaty that governs the bill of lading is the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading. It is also known as the 1921 Hague Rules and the Brussels convention of 1924. The Hague Rules were extensively revised in 1968 by a Brussels Protocol. The amended version is known as the Hague-Visby Rules. Most countries are a party to the 1921 Hague Rules, and a few have adopted that Hague-Visby amendments such as France and the United Kingdom. A bill of lading serves three purposes, First it is a carrier’s receipt for goods. Second it i...

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...bsp;This case is basically about the limitations that one can put on containers and how many items per container are to be considered one package. The Background is this Croft & Scully contracted to ship 1755 cases of soft drink for Houston to Kuwait. They arranged to ship the soda on board the M/V Skulptor Vuchetich, which arrived on Dec. 8, 1977. The cases were loaded into a container closed and sealed and stored till the ship came in to port. When the ship came in the agent of the vessel prepared a bill of lading and hired shippers Stevedoring to load the containers on the vessel. Upon loading the containers with a fork lift one of Stevedore’s employees dropped the container and 42,120 cans hit the ground and were damaged. Croft and Scully cued Goodpasture Shippers Stevedoring and Skulptor and her owners to pick up the tab. Croft and Scully are arguing the Himalaya Clause limiting recovery to $500 violates public policy. Even if liability is limited to $500 per package, Croft and Scully argues the cardboard cases of soft drinks rather than the 20 foot container should constitute the relevant package. The judgement was affirmed in part, reversed in part and remanded in part.

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