해상운송인의 불법행위책임에 관한 고찰

Purpose : Where performance of obligations under a contract of carriage is delegated toemployees, agents or a sub-contractors, who are third parties to contract, from contractedcarriers, the shipper may ignore the provisions of the contract and sue them directly in tortwhere the loss or damage to cargo resulted from their negligence. In this case, the thirdparties can not rely on the defences clause in the bill of lading because they are not partiesto the contract of carriage. What is needed by the shipping market is an efficient and fairsystem, which reasonably respects the contractual allocation of risk and prohibits suits againstemployees or agents of the carrier for the same damage. This paper is to review the reasoningthat the third parties can rely on the protection afforded by the terms of the contract. Research design, data, methodology : Research methodology adopted in this paper isthe qualitative approach as it is to interpret legal principles and provisions of theinternational and domestic regulation on liability in tort and to apply them to the actualbusiness fields, especially focusing on carriage contract, through the case study. Results : If the third parties could be sued successfully for negligence without anyprotection from the bill of lading, this would enable the cargo interests to sueregardless of the carrier's protection under the Hague-Visby Rules. Such results areundesirable for various reasons, considering the commercial reality, policy reasons withallocation of risk during carriage and good faith. Conclusions : It is found that, when faced with privity doctrine, the courts haverightly tried to extend the protection clauses in carriage contract to third persons onthe basis of considerable ingenuity in devising a variety of reasons, such as commercialreality, policy reasons and good faith.