Peculiarities of carrier’s civil liability

Peculiarities of Carrier’s Civil Liability Freight carriage by road transport remains the main type of freight transportation in Lithuania. For this reason and relatively high risk in this type of cargo transportation in practice legal disputes often arise, in which the matter of carrier’s civil liability is being resolved. Freight carriage by road transport in CMR convention are regulated very specifically because of that, in order to properly apply stipulations of CMR convention in case of carrier’s civil liability, there is a need to examine and analyze the peculiarities of carrier’s civil liability. By analyzing Lithuanian and foreign authors legal literature and case law in this master thesis main peculiarities of carrier’s liability are distinguished: legal basis and conditions of civil liability application, problematic of interpretation of these conditions in case law, interpretation and application of principle of strict carrier’s civil liability, problematic aspects of carrier’s exemption from civil liability and peculiarities of such liability limitation, cases when civil liability is applied (not applied) to the carrier, etc. It is worth to mention, that road carrier’s civil liability in CMR convention distinguishes by very specific feature – strict carrier’s civil liability which determines great part of carrier’s civil liability regulation specifics. Nevertheless, in order to counterbalance the application of principle of strict carrier’s civil liability general and specific (“privileged”) basis of carrier’s exemption from civil liability are established in CMR convention as well as the possibility for carrier to restrict his own civil liability by using Special Drawing Right (SDR). In this master thesis it is concluded that the limitation of carrier’s civil liability is sufficient and properly supporting the balance of interests between the parties of road carriage contract