Legal Liability In Multimodal Transport: A Grey Area In The Carriage Of Goods By Sea
- IJLLR Journal
- Mar 6
- 2 min read
Pranav M S, Gujarat Maritime University
CHAPTER-1: INTRODUCTION
The increasing interconnectedness of global trade has amplified the significance of efficient and streamlined logistics. Multimodal transportation, which involves the movement of goods using a combination of transport modes such as rail, road, sea, and air under a single contract, has emerged as a crucial element in optimizing logistics processes. This approach facilitates faster transit of goods and mitigates the disadvantages associated with geographical distances, proving particularly effective in large and diverse nations like India for ensuring seamless end- to-end delivery. The growing reliance on multimodal transport underscores the imperative for a robust and transparent legal framework governing liability to ensure the smooth functioning of trade operations. As trade volumes rise and supply chains become more intricate, the likelihood of liability issues increases. That's why it's so important to have a clear legal system that makes transactions more predictable and lowers costs. This method is more efficient and cheaper, but it also makes things a lot more complicated, especially when it comes to figuring out who is legally responsible for lost, damaged, or late items during shipping.
The Hague-Visby Rules, the Hamburg Rules, and the Rotterdam Rules are all examples of international agreements that set rules for shipping goods by sea. But these rules mostly apply to unimodal transit, and they don't always make it clear who is in charge when there are multiple modes of transport. Not everyone has accepted the Rotterdam Rules, which are meant to modernise and unify international shipping law. This has made it hard to use and enforce them.
India passed the Multimodal Transportation of Goods Act in 1993 to make multimodal transportation easier and more organised. The law says that the Multimodal Transport Operator (MTO) is in charge of the goods for the whole trip. Even with this, the rules in the Act are limited and don't fully cover the complicated issues of liability that come up when multimodal transport activities are involved. Recent academic evaluations have illuminated this deficiency, underscoring the imperative for a more extensive legal framework to address these challenges.
