ROTTERDAM RULES

New Rotterdam Rules

New Rotterdam Rules

What in your opinion are the important virtues

These 'performing parties' do not become directly liable under the Rotterdam Rules, but they may naturally incur liabilities under some other legal framework. If a performing party is liable under some such other legal framework, the carrier is not vicariously liable by virtue of the Rotterdam Rules; the liability of the carrier is based on the Rotterdam Rules and for breaches that result from the acts or omissions of these third parties.

The Rotterdam Rules: A Practical Annotation carefully examines the text of the Rules, all ninety-six articles of the new Convention, and compares them to the text of the Hague-Visby Rules, the instrument currently covering most bills of lading. The Rotterdam Rules opened for signature on 23rd September 2009. They represent the most comprehensive overhaul of the law of carriage of goods by sea in more than fifty years.

To coincide with the signing ceremony, six members of the Institute of Maritime Law wrote a detailed commentary on the Rules. The authors have also examined the judgments in cases decided in the English Courts under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1971 and under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1992 and have indicated whether these cases would be decided differently under the new Rotterdam Rules . This new addition to the Maritime and Transport Law Library provides you with practical and rigorous answers to all the questions you may have as cargo claims come to be governed by the Rotterdam Rules. It is essential reading for those affected by the new Rules, including practitioners, whether solicitors or barristers, claims handlers in P&I Clubs and in-house legal advisers.

The “Rotterdam Rules” is the informal name for the “Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea”, named for the city at which the signing ceremony will be held in September 2009. Negotiated through the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in co-operation with the World Trade Organization (WTO), and accordingly over the long period of its development has been generally known in the industry as “the UNCITRAL Convention.” The Rotterdam Rules are intended to be a new global legal regime for international multimodal transport, and so while the first draft of the convention came into existence about 8 years ago, the history of this project is somewhat longer.

A Brief History of International Transport Law

The law of carriage of goods by sea is often said to be the oldest body of international law, with known codes governing the Mediterranean trade dating to the time of the dominance of the Phoenicians, 1000 years BCE. For our purposes, however, the first major milestone comes in 1924 when the Hague Rules were created. Along with the amendments agreed to at Visby in 1968, they remain the most widely adopted international law for carriage of goods by sea. Many of The Hague principles were adopted into US law in 1936, but the United States did not ...