Seaworthiness in the Carriage of Goods BySea

I believed that for any students who is taking 'Carriage of Goods by Sea' this semester, it is very important to know the basic knowledge of the modules, of which one of it is the 'seaworthiness of the ship'.

I Started to learn a little through this Article-which I assume has all the major facts regarding on Unseaworthiness in brief.

http://www.1800jonesact.com/book/unseaworthy.html

At common law,the obligation of the owner to provide a seaworthy ship is absolute. It is defined as ‘fit to meet and undergo the perils of the sea and other incidental risks to which of necessity she must exposed in the course of a voyage’. It is then duty of the owner of the “vessel” to provide a safe place to work and violation of that duty can give rise to a claim or lawsuit by a worker who is injured due to the unseaworthiness of the vessel.  Unseaworthiness usually relates to conditions that could have been corrected or avoided by the company such as those caused by improper design, construction, inspection and maintenance of the work place.  The seaworthiness covers not only the physical state of the vessel but also the competence and adequacy of the crew, the sufficiency of fuel and other supplies, and the facilities necessary and appropriate for the carriage of the cargo. The method of loading the cargo, or the manner of its stowage, might be improper. For any of these reasons, or others, a vessel might not be reasonably fit for her intended service. 

The responsibilities of ensuring that a ship is safe to sail, does not mean to provide a perfect ship, but merely a ship of which reasonably fit for the purpose intended will be sufficient. The test of which is ‘reasonable for intended use’ is objective, in that the ‘vessel must have the degree of fitness which an ordinary careful and prudent owner would require his vessel to have at the commencement of her voyage having regard to all the possible circumstances of it.’ Therefore, there will be no particular standard set, but variable according to the nature of the voyage, type of cargo to be carried and the likely dangers to be encounter en route. In Burges v Wickham, the vessel might be unsuitable for the voyage, but if there was nothing further that the owners could do to make her fit for that voyage, then the implied warranty under the policy of insurance would not be broken. Unseaworthiness can only arise from defects affecting the safety of the vessel or those affecting the safety of the cargo. 

It is important to know which party shall be responsible for the unseaworthiness of ship when any accidents occur. These are ruled  under the rule of carriage of  goods by sea, which is Hague, Hague-Visby, Hamburg and Rotterdam. 

Other Online Resouces and References,

(1) http://www.atsealawyer.com/PracticeAreas/Unseaworthiness-Doctrine.asp

(2) www.mcgill.ca/files/maritimelaw/anticseaworthy.doc

(3)http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/6988/1/6988.pdf

Raychelle, CM TAN

what kind of law student are u??

Quite an amount of interesting blogs were found this afternoon. One of them are lawactually.blogspot.com,

among all his post, the following is my favourite.

What kind of law student are (or were) YOU?

	What it really means	Burned by	Frequently Says	Try
The ‘I'm seriously conscientious-er’	You’re a caffeine-fuelled boffin.	Serious rejection – that one time.	“You’re so immature!”	Getting laid
The ‘Panicker’	You're mildly neurotic	That time you got things badly wrong	“OMG – I haven’t read all 8 chapters for tomorrow’s seminar!!!”	Taking a chill-pill
The ‘I'm at uni to have a good time-er’	You’re a lazy no-good waster who should have avoided getting into debt by omitting the whole uni experience	Lack of ambition and/or intelligence	“Screw this – I’m heading down the union!!”	Visiting the library / bribing or having sex with your lecturers
The ‘Dreamer’	I’m hoping to stay in academia all my life	Real life	“I don’t see the need for practical contextualisation at all.”	Waking up and smelling the coffee
The ‘Chancer’	You’ve lucked through everything so far in life and if it aint broke, don’t fix it.	Hard work	“I’m going to wing it in tomorrow’s seminar”	Actually working hard for once in your cheating life

which one are you pals???

SIAW CHIN TEE 

Speluncean Explorers

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2005/08/revisiting_the_.html

This is a post regarding the speluncean exploreres. This has subject to much debates due to morality, society, humanity and the law. This blog is about whose opinions reader would join or present a different position entirely.
I came across this case during my first lecture of jurisprudence during my LLB final year.
This is a hard case, they are guilty in law, but in another point of view, they are just doing this to save each other by sacrifying one of their member.

In this case, I would join Judge Tatting. Clearly, we all live in a lawful society, law is abiding everyone of us. And killing is unlawful, so the statues need to apply in this case. But, the explorers are not willing to kill anyone if they are able to survive for 10 days. No one on the ground outside answer if it would be legally and or morally permissible to kill one among them to sustain the others. In my view, they are responsible for the killing as well, because they couldnt answer their question this makes them making decision on their own.

They kill because they want to survive, they kill because there is no other better option available. If they dont kill any of their member, they couldnt have survive until the rescuer reach them. So, if they are guilty for the murder after all, there is no different for them to die of starvation because at the end of the day, they still couldnt survive. They couldnt escape from the law.

On one hand, we are all bound by the law, on the other hand, we are human living in the society, bound with morality. It is harsh to make any decision. So, I would join Justice Tatting.

Know your right

Often we as a consumer do not know what our rights are exactly. Before I came across this, I thought we can only ask for a refund within 30 days of purchase. This is indeed a very good protection to the consumer because sometimes, I wont use or open up the goods I had bought until I really need to use them. 30 days is a short period, because I always dont open up the goods I bought until I really need to use them. So, it is possible that I only realise there is faulty with the goods after one month or more.
Therefore, knowing that I can still ask for a refund or a replacement within a 6 months period is really great. You can find their template letters in the website if you've bought goods within the last six month and if your goods are faulty six months after you purchased them.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theoneshow/consumer/2009/07/03/sale_of_goods_act_letter_downl.html

Passing off and Community Trade Mark

Ive found this interesting article discussing passing off.
this is the link http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2010/10/passing-off-and-ctm-three-questions.html

There are 3 questions being discuss.

The first one is
"In a case where a French company (hereinafter called 'the proprietor') owns a Community Trade Mark right, if the Community Trade Mark is threatened by infringement activities of a British company in the UK and then the proprietor sues before a CTM court in the UK, is it possible to claim the "Passing-off" right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in the UK?"


The second question
"If the Community Trade Mark is threatened by the infringement activities of the British company not only in the UK but also in France and then the proprietor sues before the CTM court in the UK, is it possible to claim the passing-off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in France and the UK? That is, when passing off right is claimed together with the CTM right, is the "Passing-Off" right applicable in France as well as in the UK, althought France is not a common law country?


The third question
"If the Community Trade Mark is threatened by infringement activities in German company in the UK and then the proprietor sues before a CTM court in Germany, is it possible to claim the passing off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the German company from using its mark in the UK? That is, does the German court have abililty to examine the existence of passing off right, although the Passing Off right is a right derived from the UK Common Law?


For question one, I would say it is possible to claim for passing off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in the UK as long as the France company has a goodwill and reputation in the UK.

For question two, I would say no, based on the commentary i had studied. This is because, in order to sue for passing off, the country needs to recognise that there is a passing off. Since, France is not a common law country, they dont recognise this passing off. I hope there is some other law could explain futher in this situation. If there is an infringement, and no injunction is grant for the passing off, this would be so unfair to the proprietor.

Question three, it seems that this is a rather difficult question because some commentary say yes some say no. Iwill need to look up for more information because this is a broad topic. I hope that I will be able to study this in future in my course.

selling used item

There are alot of internet company that act as a market for people to sell their products online to people around the world. One of the most popular internet company is ebay : http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUK370&defl=en&q=define:EBay&sa=X&ei=xzjdTMfDF8qXhQf2rb2sDQ&ved=0CBkQkAE

But, do you know that you might actually infringed copyright by selling your products in the ebay. This is an article which is quite interesting about this subject. http://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/ The post which i came across was Joshua S. Jarvis, So You Think You Own That Software?

People will usually go onto ebay and bid for the product they want because they might not afford with the price of a new item or they cant find certain product in their country. At this point, ebay is just so convenient for buyer to buy any product from other country. However, end-user should make sure they did not infringe the copyright infringement law before they decide to sell their product on ebay. Otherwise, you wouldnt know when you will be given a notice saying that you had infringed certain copyright law.

As in the case UMG Recordings, Inc v Troy Augusto et al. This case has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit. In my view, Augusto bought the product from a record stores. If these CDs are solely for promotional purposes and not for sale, then Augusto would not be able to buy them in the first place. The case shouldnt be against Augusto for re-selling them in the ebay. The case should be against the record stores because they sold it to Augusto.

And so, we should really think twice before selling our products on ebay because we dont know when we will get sue by the copyright owner.

The Right to own DVD

A report article in the Malaysian paper, The Star, about penalties for having illegal DVDs, even for private use. Obviously, pirate copies of publicly-available films on DVD are clearly wrong. It must be unlawful to copy a DVD version of the film, to record it off-air or to use a camera to grab a copy in the cinema.

What about when the film is not available? That seems to be the argument in Malaysia. There's also an argument based on the price at which it's available. Of course, illegal copying of anything would disappear immediately if the anything were available free of charge. Film producers, and record companies, must set their prices at the level at which they expect to maximise profits. Just because one can't afford the DVD, or CD, doesn't mean one can procure an illegal copy.

Well, back in the days when where people taped the records because couldn't afford to buy it.There's the scarcity argument. The people who made the records could face prosecution but the fans who bought them did no legal wrong. Nearly everyone takes a much more prorietary view of their rights now: plus, record companies and film studios are rather bigger entities, with more shareholders to satisfy. The people who make copies of music and films that they cannot afford are and must always be infringers: they should never be criminals. People who make unlawful copies on a commercial scale are and must always be infringers: whether they are also criminals is another matter, and I would say let the industry enforce civil rights before hastening to criminalise the activity, which often forms part of a wider range of activities which is clearly criminal anyway and price the product to make it available to all!

=yinyen gan=