Research On The Risks And Prevention Of Abnormal Bill Of Lading

The bill of lading is an important document in the international transportation by sea. It also plays an important part in the international sale of goods, transport and settlement. Standard usage of the bill of lading will promote the development and prosperity of international maritime trade. According to 《Maritime Law》 of our country, there are11items on the obverse side of the bill of lading, every item should be filled in truthfully and accurately. However, in fact,for some reasons the items on the obverse side can’t be filled in truthfully. These situations are called abnormal use of bills of lading in this paper. They frequently come up in international trade and has several forms, such as anti-dated B/L, advanced B/L, getting clear B/L with L/G, false B/L, etc.Abnormal use of bills of lading lead to huge risks for all parties of the bill of lading. For the shipper, the risks include refused to accept the goods by the consignee, compensation for economic losses of the consignee and charged with fraud. For the Carrier, they facing many risks including covering the claims against him from the consignee, prosecuted fraud alone or with the shipper. The consignee is the direct victim when the abnormal bills of lading are used. In that case, the shipper or the carrier will infringe upon consignee lawful rights and interests and give them a huge economic losses.For different parties of the bill of lading, they will face different risks with different kind of abnormal bills of lading, so they will take different measures to avoid risks and deal with consequence in different ways. The shipper and carrier should stand for their principles, pay more attention to the risks caused by the abnormal bill of lading and regulate their behavior by themselves. The consignee should carries on the close investigation of the quality of the shipper and pay close attention to the action of the shipper and the carrier during the transportation. Once something abnormal happen, the consignee must protect evidence in order to prosecute the parties who default or tort.