E论文英文参考资料 有关提单欺诈的法律问题

THE INTRODUCTION TO “B/L”

Wei Xiong

International trade attaches so great importance to shipping documents that, to a certain degree, it can be called trade of documents, or …symbolic‟trade. This is because shipping documents represent the title to the goods. The most important shipping document is the Bill of Lading (B/L or lading). It is a document given by a shipping company, representing both a receipt for the goods shipped and a contract for shipment between the shipping company and the shipper. It is also a document of title to the goods, giving the holder or the assignee the right to possession of the goods.

The Bill of Lading is, firstly, a contract between the shipper and the shipping company; secondly, a receipt for the consignment; and thirdly, a document of title. A Bill of Lading does not only contain a full description of the consignment—numbers and weights and marks of packages—but a lot of other information as well. It quotes the name of the shipper and the carrying vessel, the ports of shipment and destination, the freight rate, the name of the consignee (unless the B/L is …to order”, like a check), and the date of shipment, which is very important from a contractual point of view.

It may also contain a number of other clauses. Some Bills of Lading are marked “freight paid”, when a shipper is selling CIF or CFR, others may allow transshipment, which means that the cargo may be transferred from one ship to another at some intermediate port. It is often important to a shipper that his Bill of Lading should be “clean” rather than “dirty”, that is, that the shipping company should not have made any qualifications about the quantity or condition of the cargo actually shipped. This is because the shipper‟s letter of credit may insist on clean bills, just as it may insist on “on board”as opposed to “alongside”Bladings. Sometimes a mate‟s receipt is given to the shipper in advance of the B/L, which takes time to issue.

The Bill of Lading has three important functions. It is a receipt for goods signed by the shipping company and given to the shippers. It is also evidence of a contract of carriage between the shipping company and shippers. In addition, it is a document of title because the legal owner of the Bill of Lading is the owner of the goods.

For this reason the Bill of Lading can be used to transfer the goods from one owner to another. When the exporters complete it, they can write the buyer‟s name in the space, “consignee”. This means the consignee is the legal owner of the goods, as named on Bill of Lading. Otherwise the exporters can write “to other”in the consignee space. Underneath “to order” they write the name and address of the agent. Then the agent in the importing country can endorse the bill to the buyer. In this way the importers can transfer the consignment to their customers. This means that there has to be a separate Bill of Lading for each consignee and several consignments can not be consolidated on to one bill.

The Bill of Lading is the central document of a sea export transaction. The form, provided by the shipping company, is filled in by the shippers as soon as they have all the details of the goods. Then it is sent to the ship where an officer of the shipping company checks that the goods are “in good order and condition”and sign the bill