Marine Cargo Claims, 4th ed., 2008

Marine Cargo Claims 4 Ed. (MCC, 4 Ed., 2008) has now appeared on the maritime law scene, twenty years after the publication in 1988 of the third edition (MCC, 3 Ed., 1988). The whole context and content of international maritime carriage of goods law has changed in those twenty years. In particular:

• Marine Cargo Claims (MCC, 4 Ed., 2008) has gone from 1305 pages in one volume (in the 3rd Ed., 1988) to 3288 pages in two volumes in the 4th Ed., 2008 (MCC, 4 Ed., 2008).
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 reviews the major principles and rules applied historically and today by the common law and the civil law to carriage of goods by sea, providing a detailed summary of those fundamental concepts.
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 examines and compares cargo liability before loading, during carriage, and after discharge as seen in the Hague Rules (1924), the Hague/Visby Rules (1968/1979), the Hamburg Rules (1978), and the Multimodal Convention (1980).
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 presents basic civil law, common law and maritime law principles as applied to marine cargo claims especially in the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Canada, with copious references as well to the laws of other jurisdictions, including through carriage, combined carriage and transhipment.
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 examines and refers to past and recent case-law and writings of many of the world’s most influential authors on maritime transport law, as well as to much significant national legislation.
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 not only contains the new maritime and trade law of carriage of goods by sea (including responsibility before loading and after discharge), but also presents 190 pages of summaries of the law of 48 countries written by legal experts from those countries.
• MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 has more than twice as many pages than Marine Cargo Claims, 3 Ed., 1988.
• Conclusion: Readers of MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 will benefit immensely from this greatly expanded new edition of Marine Cargo Claims.

The three main challenges

The three main challenges facing the author were 1) researching, 2) understanding, and then 3) presenting the new legislation and case law of the past twenty years in order to bring the text up-to-date.

The audience

It is clear that the law is increasingly complicated, so that practitioners have often become specialists today in one branch of maritime law, rather than the whole field. MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 will be of great benefit to those specialists as well as to the general practitioner.

Tetley’s website

The audience for MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 has expanded significantly in twenty years and is reflected in Tetley’s website www.mcgill.ca/maritimelaw which receives daily visitors from 90 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and North and South America. The website refers constantly to MCC, 4 Ed., 2008 so that the text and website work hand-in-hand.

The Future – the UNCITRAL Draft Convention

The UNCITRAL Draft Convention on the Carriage of Goods [Wholly or Partly] [By Sea] (UNCITRAL Draft Convention) is being prepared by the UNCITRAL’s Working Group III (Transport Law). The Draft Convention aims to join various components of international carriage of goods by land and sea including multimodal carriage, negotiability, electronic commerce, freight, liens, right of control, transport documents, liability, delivery, on-carriage ashore etc. etc. into one international convention (the UNCITRAL Draft Convention). The UNCITRAL Draft Convention is a valiant effort, but it is deemed by some persons to be exceedingly complicated and therefore difficult to understand and put into effect by many carriers and practitioners. The final text of the UNCITRAL Convention will be signed at the end of 2008 and will be included in Volume 3 of Marine Cargo Claims 4 Ed., which volume is expected to be published in one year’s time, i.e. on April 30, 2009, with detailed commentaries by William Tetley and by leading interested groups and authors from around the world.

N.B. Volumes 1 and 2 of Marine Cargo Claims, 4 Ed. will be published shortly in Chinese in Beijing, China.