On The Subject Of Persons Entitled To Limit Liability For Maritime Claims

Maritime limitation of liability system is an ancient and importantsystem of maritime law, It is accompanied by the development of worldmaritime industry and the aim is to protect the ship-owners’s maritimelegitimate rights and interests. This is a traditional maritime legalsystem that， when a marine accident happened, the duty officer canrestrict the liability for damage to a within limits. It embodies anappropriate protection of law to marine industry. In the maritime law itis customary described the subject of liabilities as the people who hasliability to Maritime claims and has the right to restrict the liabilityfor damage according to the Maritime limitation of liability.With the continuous development of the maritime industry, maritimelimitation of liability system is playing an increasingly important role.It significantly protects the development of world maritime industry. Andit is gradually improved accompanied by the development of the maritimeindustry.Its legislation gradually unified a convention in the world.These conventions give a basis for reasoning and assistance to all of thecountries in the world when they transact the practical problems.With time goes on and the continues development of the economy, avariety of emerging subjects of the maritime are added to theinternational shipping business. With the massive growth of maritimetrade the ship supply is also grow rapidly. Charter becomes a veryimportant mean of regulation vessel market. After World War II, the adventof container ships set off another revolution of the maritime industry.The advent of container ships enriched the forms of charter and appearsBareboat charterer, Time Charterers and Voyage Charter these maritimeentities. With development of the economy, ship managers, NVOCC, andemerged with the development of the marine insurance a kind of emerging maritime entities appeared--responsibility insurer. So what’s thestatus of these emerging subjects? Front so much of the subject ofliabilities who has the right to protect their legitimate rights withMaritime Limitation of Liability System? This issue caused widespreaddiscussion in the academic community. Some of the maritime subjects areconcerned by international conventions and added to the subject ofMaritime Limitation of Liability System according to discussion. Theirsubject position has been be explicitly stipulated by the law. But someof the other maritime subjects have not protected by the law till now,it is instructive and meaningful to deal with the practical problems toclarify whether these subjects are the subject of Maritime Limitation ofLiability System.