중국의 권리포기 선화증권의 소송사례에 관한 연구

Abstract

Purpose: International Organizations, such as the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), have made every effort to introduce the electronic bill of lading and sea waybill on a global basis to solve the crisis of bill of lading. A sea waybill is used in Europe and Americas to cope with the crisis of bill of lading, but the surrender bill of lading is used instead of sea waybill in Eastern Asia. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of the shipping practice of using the surrender bill of lading by studying a Chinese litigation case and finding the implications and cautious remarks on the use of the surrender bill of lading. Composition/Logic: This paper is composed of five sections. Section I provides an introduction and explains the background and purpose of this study. Section II analyzes the previous papers on surrender bill of lading and its situation. Section III analyzes a litigation case on surrender bill of lading, which competes with a straight bill of lading. Section IV finds the implications of the case study and cautious remarks on the use of a surrender bill of lading. Section V concludes this paper. Findings: The surrender bill of lading is not a type of a bill of lading, but a shipping practice that a consignee can take delivery of the cargo without redemption the original bill of lading, thereby not losing time at destination. The case is related to the surrender bill of lading and straight bill of lading, but the court’s decision was based on the straight bill of lading. Under the Chinese Commercial Act which is contrary to the Korean and Japanese Commercial Acts, when a straight bill of lading is made out to a named consignee, the carrier can make delivery of the goods to the named consignee without production of the straight bill of lading. Originality/Value: The global service of electronic bill of lading has not been introduced practically so far. In particular, a surrender bill of lading is used instead of a sea waybill in Korea, China, and Japan to cope with the crisis of bill of lading. This paper focuses on the first litigation case regarding the surrender bill of lading and straight bill of lading, which compete on deciding the contractual relations between the carrier and shipper. These contractual relations were settled by the court based on the straight bill of lading, which allows the carrier to make delivery of the goods to the consignee without the production of the bill of lading.