Law and Practice of the Obligations of the Carrier over the Cargo:The Hague-Visby Rules

The present-day law on the carriage of goods by sea suffers from a lack of uniformity and from being not able to adequately address the current developments in the industry of international shipping. The leading liability regime which is in force, the Hague-Visby Rules, consists of rather outdated provisions that Courts need to interpret accordingly in order to achieve the intended objects of the Rules: to strike a balance between the interests of carriers and shippers, and also to ensure that this balance is applied uniformly. The current thesis focuses precisely on the area of the obligations of the carrier over the cargo. The research aims at studying how the specific provisions regulating the carrier’s cargo-related obligations manifest themselves, particularly in English law. However, the research points also to how other jurisdictions address the problems discussed in the present thesis. These are, in particular, the bundle of obligations set forth in Article III rule 2 of the Hague-Visby Rules as well as how the same are applied in the context of specific issues such as the incorporation of a FIOS(T) clause in the contract of carriage; the stowage on deck, and the carriage of containerized cargo. Since the analysis extensively covers also the position under the Rotterdam Rules, the end results can lead to more comprehensive conclusions with regard to the need of a reform unifying the fragmented rules on carriage of goods by sea and, in particular, the provision governing the carrier’s obligation over the cargo