On The Identification Of The Carrier In The Carriage Of Goods By Sea

Because of the complex relationship between the parties involved in carriage of goods by sea as well as nonstandard of the operation of bill of lading, the issue of carrier identification is a difficult problem in the juridical practice. This paper aims to analyze how to identify the carrier through overall study in order to solve the above problem.The first part is an overview of the carrier. There are two reasons why the identification of carrier is so difficult:first, the definition of the carrier is not unified: and second, many participants is involved in carriage of goods by sea and their relation is complicated. The author analyzes the definitions of carriers defined in international conventions and the national law provisions and relationship between the parties.In the second part, the author described the basis of the carrier identification. At present, the carrier identification is mainly based on two standard:first, the contract of carriage of goods by sea; second, the record about carrier on the bill of lading. The author has analyzed the identification of the carrier in the situation of the conflict between the carriage contract and the B/L according to the stipulation of the international convention and the national law stipulation and combining with maritime cases occurred in trial practice.In the third part, the author studies the carrier's identification under special circumstances. First, the NVOCC's identification. In practice many NVOCC were also the freight forwarder at the same time, it is very difficult to identify the relationship between the NVOCC and the freight forwarder when they do the same business. The author summarizes the four standards to distinguish between freight forwarders and NVOCC. Second, the author also analyzes the carrier's identification under the complex charter party.In the fourth part, author summarizes the difficulties in the identification of carrier and make some suggestion of the improvement of the system about carrier identification.