Limitation Of Liability For Maritime Claims In China And Legislative Proposal

Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims is a special system in maritime law. Due to the huge risks of maritime shipping and the policy favoring investment to invest to maritime field to promote their own maritime prosperity, the limitation of liability for maritime claims becomes to a protective policy for the shipowners’behalves. It develops further improvement after several centuries.After the trend of the unification of the system of limitation of liability for maritime claims last century, it formed three major international conventions. Due to the divergence of the interests of all countries and different recognitions to the three major international conventions, every country has different provisions on the system of Limitation of liability for maritime claims in domestic law. Maritime Code and Maritime Procedure Law of China, which is based on the convention of1976, also make the relevant provisions on the system, but there are many details still need to supple and improve.This paper does some reaserch on the problems existing in limitation of liability for maritime claims. It mainly departs into five chapters.The first chapter introduces the concept, the causes, value and historical development of the system of limitation of liability for maritime claims. And it affirms the existence value of the system of Limitation of liability for maritime claims.The second chapter describes the three major international conventions of the system of limitation of liability for maritime claimsThe third chapter evaluates the current situation of the system of limitation of liability for maritime claims in our country. It mainly includes the system of the entity and procedure.The fourth chapter analyzes the defects existing in the system of limitation of liability for maritime claims. It focuses on discussing the defects in procedure, including lack of limitation of liability procedure, jurisdiction confusion, problems in interpleaded cause procedure, liability limit in fund procedure and problems in registration of claims. The following essay firstly analyzed the nature of limitation of liability for maritime claims right and discuss whether the system of limitation of liability needs to form an action of confirmation independently with the intention to design a reasonable procedure system to guarantee the substantive rights.In the fifth chapter, the writer puts forward that the design of the procedure of the system of limitation of liability for maritime claims should insist on the principles of the combination of the substantive law and the procedural law, and the combination of common procedures and special procedures. In this chapter, the writer compares and analyses the related law of some aspects in imitational conventions, other nations and China.