One year time bar in carriage of goods by sea

The Aries, House of Lords, 1977: the charterer set a cargo shortage against the owner's freight claim, but the year had run. It had to pay the freight in full, without even being allowed to raise its claim by way of set-off. The one-year period of Article III, Rule 6 of the Hague Rules, carried into Hague-Visby, runs from delivery or from the date the goods should have been delivered. The parties may extend it by agreement; no court will relax it in a claimant's favor. English law treats it as extinguishing the right itself rather than as an ordinary limitation period, hence the outcome in The Aries. The first to feel it is the cargo underwriter: it pays its assured, then proceeds by subrogation against the carrier, and inherits a period already largely consumed by handling the file. The other regimes do not line up. The Montreal Convention, for air, and the Hamburg Rules, for sea, allow two years, the CMR one year extended to three for willful misconduct, so a single multimodal shipment can become time barred on three different dates. The rationale is evidence, since a ship keeps neither its crew nor its papers indefinitely.

• Montreal Convention of May 28, 1999, Article 35 (two years, carriage by air)