Marine Hull And Associated Liabilities

Diploma in insurance M98 syllabus study text.

Considers legislation to authorize U.S. Maritime Commission issuance of liability insurance for off-season iron ore shipments on Great Lakes for national defense needs, pt. 3.

In the early days of shipping and international maritime trade many more casualties occurred at sea. Ever since, ship owners liability for cargo claims has been increasing both in number and in cost in spite of the huge technical development in international maritime transport. In order to make it easier for ship owners to operate safely and efficiently the Protection and Indemnity appeared around 1870 as mutual marine insurance. Besides Hull & Machinery and Cargo Insurance offered on the international commercial market in insurance, Protection and Indemnity Insurance (known under the acronym P&I) is a ship owners insurance cover for legal liabilities to third parties. This cover is generally achieved by entering the ship in a mutual insurance club. Nowadays, the mutuality is performed by an underwriter who endeavors to see that each owner carries his fair share of the risk. The members of P&I clubs are ship owners, charterers or ship management companies. At present, a major function of the Protection and Indemnity insurance is to cover the ship owner for legal and contractual liability for loss of cargo or damage to cargo if there has been a breach of the carriage contract. This liability is called Third party liability. The ship owner will handover the cargo claim to his P&I Club. In order to clarify this liability, Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the Hague Visby rules stipulates: Subject to the provisions of Article 4 the carrier shall properly and carefully load, handle, stow, carry, keep, care for and discharge the goods carried. Therefore, the focus in this research study is placed on the function of Protection and Indemnity insurance covering the ship owners liability for damage to cargo or loss of cargo.

The book examines how the absence of insurance in the past led to some special maritime liability law principles such as ‘general average’ (i.e., losses or expenses shared by all the parties to a maritime adventure) and the limitation of shipowners’ liability. In the absence of insurance, these principles served the function of insurance mostly for shipowners. As commercial marine insurance is now widely available, these principles have lost their justification and may in fact interfere with the most important goal of liability law i.e., deterrence from negligence. The work thus recommends their abolition. It further argues that when insurance is easily available and affordable to the both parties to a liability claim, the main goal of liability law should be deterrence as opposed to compensation. This is exactly the case with the maritime cargo liability claims where both cargo owners and shipowners are invariably insured. As a result, the sole focus of cargo liability law should be and to a great extent, is deterrence. On the other hand in the vessel-source oil pollution liability setting, pollution victims are not usually insured. Therefore oil pollution liability law has to cater both for compensation and deterrence, the two traditional goals of liability law. The final question the work addresses is whether the deterrent effect of liability law is affected by the availability of liability insurance. Contrary to the popular belief the work attempts to prove that the presence of liability insurance is not necessarily a hindrance but can be a complementary force towards the realization of deterrent goal of liability law.