Study On Liabilities-sharing Between The Parties Of Towage Contract

As the towage service has been more and more widespread, people have gradually realized the importance of the special marine operation. It is an inevitable question that how the parties divide the liabilities for the personal injuries and property damages during the fulfilment of the towage contract. Liabilities-clarifying has an important significance on the timely resolution of disputes and healthy development of the industry.The legislation lacking makes the liabilities-sharing depends on the contract arrangements. Based on the Chinese regulations, the legislative and judicial practices of different countries and the main terms of standard towage contracts, this paper analyzes and discusses the liabilities-sharing between the parties of towage contract, in order to provide some references and advices for the towing practice.This paper consists of four parts. The first part is the summary of towage contract. While defining the relevant concepts, this paper analyzes the nature of the towage contract, claims that the towage contract is a service contract which has carriage characteristics and certain similarities with the contract for work, and the relevant provisions of the two contracts could be applied to the liabilities-sharing of the towage contract parties. The second part describes the obligation basis of the liabilities-sharing. Studying the basic obligations which have significant influence on the liabilities-sharing, this paper researches the content and nature of the obligations, and analyzes the effects affected by the dominant position. The third part focuses on the imputation principles of liabilities-sharing. Through the empirical approach, this paper concludes that both the fault principle and no-fault principle are applicable to the towage contract, and discusses the effects of the two different mechanisms.The forth part discusses the special contract arrangements of the liabilities-sharing, and analyzes the results under some special terms.