The Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1992

Abstract

Almost unnoticed except by specialists in the field of international trade law the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act 1992 crept onto the statute book last summer. The Act implements recommendations in the Law Commissions’ Report ‘Rights of Suit in Respect of Carriage of Goods by Sea,” and owes its place on the statute book to Lord Goff, who took up the Commissions’ proposals and introduced the Commissions’ draft Bill as a private peer’s measure in the House of Lords. First introduced in February, the Bill was lost on the dissolution of Parliament for the General Election, but was reintroduced in June and, with Government support, completed its passage in almost record time, coming into force on 16 September 1992. In just six sections the Act replaces the Bills of Lading Act 1855, breaking the link between the transfers of property and contractual rights, extending the principle of transfer of contract rights to other carriage documents, resolving the difficulties created by the decision in Grunt v Norwuy2 and allowing regulations to be introduced to deal with the introduction of electronic alternatives to transport documents. We propose to examine the reforms in the new Act against the background of the weaknesses in the old law and alternative reforms which might have been adopted, including the reforms of the doctrine of privity contemplated in the Law Commission’s recent consultation paper.3