The contract of carriage by sea in liner trade- the Swedish and English law

Sammanfattning: The Law of Carriage of Goods by Sea is dominated by international conventions. Both Sweden and England have one of these conventions, the Hague-Visby Rules (HVR), as the basis for their mandatory legislation. Accordingly, the relationship between the parties to a contract of carriage by sea is generally regulated in similar ways in these two countries. The new Swedish Maritime Code from 1994 has then however also been influenced by a later convention, the Hamburg Rules. This is one of the reasons to the fact that dissimilarities of importance do exist, regardless of the common adoption of the HVR, between the Swedish and English law in this field. The Swedish law applies to a wider group of contracts and during a longer period of time than the English mandatory law. This normally results in that the cargo owner is being more protected, since when the HVR do not apply in English law, the carrier can often avoid liability through clauses in the contract. Even when the HVR are applicable in English law, the Swedish law will, with some exceptions, be more advantageous for the cargo owner. One of the important exceptions to this is the carrier's responsibility for independent contractors. The influence in Swedish law from the Hamburg Rules seems to have had a positive effect. The solutions in Swedish law, to some of the problems in this field of law, often seem to be preferable to those in English law. It must then only be reminded that different interests might be given different weight in England and in Sweden.