Carriage of Goods in UK Law

In such a case, it seems to me proper, as in the case of the carriage of goods by land, to treat the parties as having entered into the contract on the footing that Corporation would be entitled to enforce contractual rights for the benefit of those who suffered from defective performance but who, under the terms of the contract, could not acquire any right to hold McAlpine liable for breach.

But the rule extends to all forms of carriage including carriage by sea itself where no bill of lading has been issued, and there may still be occasional cases in which the rule would provide a remedy where no other would be available to a person sustaining loss which under a rational legal system ought to be compensated by the person who has caused it.

The only way in which I find it possible to rationalise the rule in Dunlop v. Lambert so that it may fit into the pattern of the English law is to treat it as an application of the principle, accepted also in relation to policies of insurance upon goods, that in a commercial contract concerning goods where it is in the contemplation of the parties that the proprietary interests in the goods may be transferred from one owner to another after the contract has been entered into and before the breach which causes loss or damage to the goods, an original party to the contract, if such be the intention of them both, is to be treated in law as having entered into the contract for the benefit of all persons who have or may acquire an interest in the goods before they are lost or damaged, and is entitled to recover by way of damages for breach of contract the actual loss sustained by those for whose benefit the contract is entered into.

This Bill of Lading shall have effect subject to the provisions of the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act of the United States, approved April 16th, 1936, which shall be deemed to be incorporated herein, and nothing herein contained shall be deemed a surrender by the Carrier of any of Its rights or immunities or an increase of any of its responsibilities or liabilities under said Act.

The weight of the European authority is thus firmly in favour of a conclusion that CMR is applicable to an international road leg of a larger contract in cases (a), (b) and (c) mentioned in paragraph 15. While I see the force of the objections suggested by Prof. Fitzpatrick and accepted by the judge, my own inclination, apart from authority, would have been in the same sense.

It is important to remember that the Act of 1924 was the outcome of an International Conference and that the rules in the Schedule have an international currency. As these rules must come under the consideration of foreign Courts it is desirable in the interests of uniformity that their interpretation should not be rigidly controlled by domestic precedents of antecedent date, but rather that the language of the rules should be construed on broad principles of general acceptation.

It is convenient to speak as if a document had been issued in the form the document would have taken had it been issued. It is no longer necessary to review two questions (whether there was one contract of carriage or two, and whether Felixstowe was a port of shipment in the UK) which exercised the arbitrators and the lower courts.