Common Carriers
Igor Sterzhantov©2012
Common Carriers
By Igor Sterzhantov©2012
www.lawandsea.net
All persons carrying goods for hire, as masters and owners of ships, lightermen, stage-coachmen, and
such like, come under the denomination of common carriers. With respect to owners of ships, where
there is a charterparty, by terms of which the possession of the vessel does not pass to the charterer,
but continues in the owners, the latter are to be deemed the carriers; but where possession is
transferred by the charterparty, and the charterers employ their vessel in carrying under bills of lading
or otherwise, the goods of different merchants, they resemble the owners of a seeking or general ship,
and are considered in law common carriers1.
Common carrier’s duties and obligations are at the root of many if not all fundamental principles of
carriage of the goods by sea. However, originally, these duties were simply those of bailees in general,
coupled with the liabilities attached to the exercise of a public calling and were not peculiar to common
carriers only but were regarded as the custom of law of common hoymen, or lightermen, etc., according
to the business of the party concerned2. However, by the end of the eighteenth century the notion was
evidently gaining ground that the liability of common carriers for loss of goods, whatever the cause of
the loss might be, arose from a special principle peculiar to them and not applicable to bailees in
general3:
But there is a further degree of responsibility by the custom of the realm, that is, by the common
law; a carrier is in the nature of an insurer .... To prevent litigation, collusion, and the necessity of
going into circumstances impossible to be unravelled, the law presumes against the carrier,..4
Thus, bailee in general will be liable if he fails to take reasonable care of the goods while they were in its
custody. Liability of common carriers crystallised into one of an absolute duty to deliver the goods he
undertook to carry at all events: the law charges this person, whose trade is to carry goods, against all
events but the acts of God and of the enemies of the king5. In other words common carriers stand in
situation of insurers of the goods, not only against the disappearance or destruction, but against all
forms of damage to the goods except few limitations mentioned above.
Read this article in full: http://www.lawandsea.net/Contract/Contract_Common_Carriers.html
1
A treatise on the liabilities and rights of common carriers. J.F. Jones, 1827
2
O. Holmes, The Common Law, 136
3
O. Holmes, The Common Law, 196
4
As Lord Mansfield stated in Forward v. Pittard (1785) 1 T.R. 27
5
Coggs v Bernard (1703) 2 Ld. Raym 909. Later two more exceptions were added: inherent vice of cargo and fault
of consignor.
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