ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods wholly or partly by Sea, better known as the Rotterdam Rules (RR). The drafters of the rules have created a carve-out position for so-called volume contracts, for the carriage of live animals and for the carriage of goods on deck. Volume contracts cover 'the carriage of a specified quantity of goods in a series of shipments during an agreed period of time'. Some of these non-maritime conventions also apply directly to unimodal legs within multimodal contracts of carriage. The provisions of the convention regulate the carrier's liability during the sea leg, but they do not take precedence over provisions of other 'international instruments' beyond the tackle-to-tackle period. The liability regime for the individual legs within a multimodal contract of carriage under the rules thus ultimately depends on the circumstances of the case.
