Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the LLM in Transnational and European Commercial Law, Mediation, Arbitration and Energy Law at the International Hellenic University. In carriage of goods by sea, the charterparty and the bill of lading are the most important contracts. The parties to a charterparty contract very frequently wish to refer their disputes arising under the contract to arbitration and not litigation. For this reason charterparties contain arbitration clauses. Bills of lading on the other hand do not contain any forum selection clauses but they incorporate the clause contained in the charterparty under which they are issued. The main purpose of the incorporation clause is to enable the shipowner or the charterer, who is also the carrier under the bill of lading, to deal with the holder of the bill of lading on the same terms as his charterparty. As a result, it is a common practice the incorporation clauses in bills of lading. However, there is a great controversy about the validity of the incorporation of a charterparty arbitration clause in the bill of lading and whether it will be binding upon the holder, who is not the original party to the agreement and in most cases had never seen the arbitration agreement. The issue is of great importance since an invalid incorporation will not bind third parties. This dissertation will survey the requirements for a valid incorporation of a charterparty arbitration clause into a bill of lading, through a comparison between English and US law . We will refer to case law that has formulated the present rules and outline the recent developments in the incorporation issue.