On Several Questions Of Port Operator's Legal Liability

Port is a very important link of all kinds of transportations, but not a single perfect civil law system has been legislated in this field. Though the rules on cargo operation in port made up this blank in a certain extent, it's in a low hierarchy as departmental rules of Ministry of Communications. Beginning with the concept, business scope and legal status and of the port operator, the paper then has a discussion on its doctrine of liability fixation, period of liability and limitation of liability. Moreover, the author puts forward her own opinion that in the law system, port should be incorporated into the transportation department, because the business of the port operator is an extension and supplement to that of the carrier, who deals with cargo and passenger transportation by water. So, in order to be identical with the Maritime Code of PRC and other related regulations, the port operator should has the same period of liability as those carriers'. Namely, it should not happen that when any damage or missing to goods or hurt to passenger occurs, there is neither carrier nor port available for the consignee or the passenger to claim against. Meanwhile, in order to avoid such cases, the port operator's period of liability stipulated in the port law is sometimes overlapped with that of the carrier's. So, the best effort should be made to avoid conflicts in liabilities field between the port operator and the carrier, and then the consignee and the passenger would have a consistent interest and duty in port.