Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
Meddling in the multimodal muddle?—a network of conflict in the UNCITRAL Draft Convention on the Carriage of Goods [wholly or partly] [by sea]
David A Glass *
The work of UNCITRAL on a new international regime for carriage of goods by sea looks set to have a major impact on the law governing multimodal transport, leaving little room for new initiatives and potentially cutting off other options which do not involve a sea-based liability. The continued existence of international Conventions concerning single modes of transport requires some account to be taken of them in the new Convention. The provisions put forward to deal with this appear uncertain as to their objectives and may need clarification in the light of a much closer analysis of the potential purposes which underlie them. The benefit of having a single set of rules governing transport documents must not be overridden by the need to provide solutions to the problems of conflict of Conventions
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the advent of containerization the international community has sought to produce acceptable rules to govern the liability of carriers of goods who provide international services which combine more than one mode of transport. Success has proved elusive, not least because any such effort must face the reality of the existence of international regimes of liability governing particular modes of carriage and so must, in the absence of moves towards greater harmonization of individual modal regimes,1
produce a solution which accommodates or overrides them.2
A distinct feature in this area has been the use made of the international effort as a source for commercial initiatives which underpin much of
* Lecturer, Cardiff Law School. The author is grateful to Professors RR Churchill, RG Lee and C Wells of the Cardiff Law School for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. He would also like to acknowledge the assistance of Mr Markus Heischmann (LLM student at the Cardiff Law School) with materials on German law.
1. For the International MultiModal Transport Association, this would be the ideal solution, UNCITRAL, “Addendum to compilation of replies to a questionnaire on door-to-door transport and additional comments by States and international organizations on the scope of the draft instrument, Note by the Secretariat” (18 September 2003): A/CN.9/WG.III/WP.28/Add 1, 4.
2. The source of the multimodal muddle or “mayhem”, eg, C Hill, “Multimodal Mayhem??” [2004] Maritime Risk International
, March, 7.
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