The TT Club, the leading transport risk insurance provider, has secured an important clarification for its Members from the US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) service regarding the continued ability to utilise the term "said to contain" (STC) on bills of lading.
Our friend Peter Zambito from the New York law firm of Dougherty, Ryan, Giuffra, Zambito & Hession points out that judges in US courts, as well as their counterparts in other countries, take considerable exception to clauses on bills of lading or other transport documents that are extremely difficult to read
A carrier can rely on the terms of the US Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (US-COGSA) to limit liability for damage while the cargo was temporarily on shore during restowing operations at an intermediate port, the US Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit, sitting in Norfolk Virginia, has decided.
One of the questions members frequently ask the Club is about the difference between a forwarder's certificate of receipt (FCR) and an NVOC (non-vessel-operating carrier) bill of lading.
When you have finished reading this stand up at your desk. Now imagine that within ten seconds you are moved to a position two storeys above you and 11 metres along the floor. And then, with equal suddenness, you are back at your desk, only to be immediately transported back again up two floors and 11 metres along ... and so on and on, three times a minute, one hundred and eighty times an hour, for days at a time... Within a few minutes of this treatment you would be begging for this torture to stop. Yet this is not some white-knuckle fairground ride, but what cargo experiences day in, day out in containers on board ship.
Even on land, cargo can experience very substantial decelerations, particularly where containers are carried by rail. Although containers are now more often carried on dedicated point-to-point container trains, on long-distance movements marshalling cannot be eliminated altogether.
