A Study On The Compensation Liability Of Carriers

Carriage of goods by sea is a kind of business of high risks, and therefore not all voyages can achieve a complete success, leaving inevitably some legal disputes in relation to the carriage. As a result, the accurate understanding on the relevant legal systems of the carriage of goods by sea would be rather necessary. This dissertation would present a research into the laws and regulations of Chinese maritime law related to the liability of carrier in terms of liable bodies, the period of liability and criterions of liability, and further discuss all the relevant existing legal problems. The dissertation consists the following five chapters:The first chapter is going to introduce the general theories on the liabilities of the carrier for damages, and then give a comparison among the municipal laws and international conventions on the basis of a deep analysis of the meanings of all these liabilities of the carrier for damages.Next, the second chapter will discuss the liable bodies for the damages to the goods transported by sea. It mainly focuses on the comparison of contractual carrier and performing carrier, where the specific legal relations between the contractual carrier and performing carrier would be referred.The third chapter is on the period of liability of the carrier for the damages. A comparison of the legislations and cases regarding to the period of liability would be presented following after the analysis of the relevant laws and regulations of the Chinese maritime law.The criterions of liability for the damages would then be discussed in the fourth chapter, and the issues such as the nature of criterions of liability, the system of criterions of liability and the burden of proof would be elaborated after an introduction of the relevant regulations on the criterions of liability.The final chapter would generalize the conclusion of this dissertation.The system of the liabilities of the carrier for damages can be accounted as the core of maritime law. This dissertation is made for the purpose of trying to reach some solutions for the potential legal problems inherited in the legal system of the liability of the carries for damages and some suggestions for the modification of Chinese maritime law.