Multimodal Transport Operators Liability during Sea Legs - Application of the Hague-Visby Rules and Hamburg Rules

With the development of international multimodal transports, the liability of multimodal transport operators (MTOs) has been a crisis drawing concerns of parties in international multimodal transport contracts (MT contracts). There have been attempts to create a global uniform regime applicable to govern the liability of multimodal transport operators but none of these regimes have a mandatory effect. Therefore, until now different unimodal international conventions for multimodal transport will be applied to govern the liability of MTOs during sea, air, rail and road legs. As a result, this paper will discuss liability regimes for MTOs under the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules to discover liability of MTOs during a sea leg. Particularly, the regulations related to the scope of liability, limitation, and the time bar as well as problems to the multimodal transport of these regimes will be analysed and critically examined in this paper.