CARGO LIABILITY REGIMES

The present report has been worked out by the OECD Maritime Transport Committee and made available to a public. The document itself has been arranged in four major parts. The first part provides some pure introductory information. The second part addresses the existing regimes of maritime cargo liabilities, and their common elements and differences, in particular.

The third part of the paper is mainly dedicated to the existing regimes on which significant differences have been there. Finally, the fourth and last part of the booklet contains the valuable concluding remarks. There are also some annexes in the book providing the information supplementary to the main content of the publication. Subject annexes are covering the description of the project, list all organizations that have been consulted on July Paper, address the liability for the transported cargo on multi-modal journeys, providing some preliminary analysis of the subject issues.

The fourth annex presents a good technical comparison of the responsibilities taken by the carriers together with their liability for cargoes under the main regimes of cargo liability. And, finally, the last annex provides the readers with a comparison of various liability limits, and notice periods that are set for the notifications of damage or loss, plus the timelines for initiation of the associated legal proceedings under the above mentioned main cargo liability regimes.