The Legal Liability Of Domestic Freight Forwarding

In recent years,the disputes of delivery of goods without thebill of lading under the term of FOB have been going to grow inmaritime trial.The shipper designated by the foreign buyer or thefreight forwarding companies carries out the delivery of goods.Andbased on proceeding effectiveness considerations,domestic sellerschoose domestic freight forwarding companies as the object ofprosecution.Under the FOB terms,the importer is responsible forbooking a charter.And due to the trade facilitation or the marketprice,the buyer asked the seller to make the arrange for goodsdelivery by overseas freight forwarding.Foreign freight forwardinginformed the seller to export goods to the designated domesticfreight forwarding.Accordingly,the exporter’s original deliveryobligation of “across the rail of the ship” is performed by thespecified domestic freight forwarding,when the goods is shippedcorrectly,the domestic freight forwarding issues its own or theoutside freight forwarding’s bill of lading,to show the goods havebeen received or shipped.Sometimes,the domestic freight forwardingdoes not issue the house bill of lading,it is only responsible tohand the master bill of lading.Whether the domestic freightforwarding enterprise is responsible for the non-delivery of goods ofbill of lading,and what is the legal status of the domestic freightforwarding.Is there a close relationship between them.Once thedomestic freight forwarding takes the responsibility of the non- delivery of goods of bill of lading,what are the nature of liabilityand the scope of compensation concrete.All these will be discussed inthe below paper.This paper starts from a case of maritime releasing goods withoutoriginal bills of lading on the term of FOB.The buyer and thedomestic freight debate whether the domestic freight is to bear theresponsibility.And whether the domestic freight is to take theresponsibility is closely related to the legal status-the agent orthe non vessel carrier.If it is only the legal status of theagent,then it is only to responsible for handing the house bill oflading or the house bill of lading issued by its own,and it can beexempted if take the the duty of care;if it is a non-vessel carrier,issue its own house bill of lading,then it is to do the obligationsof the carrier.To the non-vessel carrier,if it is not release thegoods with the house bill of lading,then it shall bear the liability.In theory,releasing goods without bills of lading constitutes abreach of contract,tort or breach tort concurrence.The importers canchoose infringement or breach of contract.But in practice,there isnot any transport contract between the seller and the domesticfreight forwarding,the seller is often the biggest victims,so theseller can choose to claim the infringement.But whether the sell canchoose to claim the breach of contract will be discussed in thepaper.Also the scope the compensation of the domestic freightforwarding has also discussed in the article,especially the FOBcompensation price.The author believes the amount of the compensationof the loss of the goods should be paid according to the actual valuethe goods at the time of loading.Also the actual value is generallybelieved to the value plus the freight and the insurance.But underthe FOB terms,the actual value of goods does not involve the freightand the insurance premium.So the compensation should deduct thesecost.To the export tax rebate loss,the author thinks it should bepaid.Though the export tax rabat is not the value of goods,the sellerwill belongs the refund as income when calculate the costs andbenefits in the exporter of export goods.So the refund belongs to thepredictable range,it should be compensated.In the end, in order to regulate the operation and theresponsibility of the domestic freight forwarding,this paper putsforward the legal status of domestic freight forwarding,improve theregulation of house bill of lading and the master bill oflading,implement the non-vessel carrier insurance system.