Hague-Visby Rules

1979 protocol, in force since February 14, 1984: under a bill of lading, the sea carrier's liability is capped at 666.67 special drawing rights per package or 2 per kilogram, whichever is the higher. That is the top floor of a text born in Brussels in 1924 and revised at Visby in 1968. It imposes on the carrier two duties no contract can cut down: to exercise due diligence to make the ship seaworthy before and at the beginning of the voyage, and to care properly for the goods during the passage. In return the carrier gets a list of defenses that has generated endless argument, with nautical fault of the crew and fire without personal fault at the top. They are survivals from an age when the owner could neither supervise nor reach his ship. Any action is time barred one year after delivery. The text answered the exemption clauses carriers imposed on shippers at the end of the nineteenth century, to the point where banks no longer treated the bill of lading as security. In a subrogated recovery, much turns on what counts as a package. In The Maersk Tangier, in 2018, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales counted as a package each of the 1,458 pieces of frozen tuna stowed in three containers. That raised the cap the carrier had invoked almost five hundredfold.