Multimodal Transport Document: Combined Carriage
The document covering carriage by at least two modes, the FIATA FBL, UCP 600 Article 19, and the liability regime problem it creates.
A multimodal transport document covers carriage by at least two different modes under a single contract with a single party responsible end to end, which is what an any-mode Incoterms rule normally produces.
The full article will cover the document’s function and its issuers, the FIATA Multimodal Transport Bill of Lading and the standard conditions behind it, the negotiable and non-negotiable forms, UCP 600 Article 19 and how a bank examines a multimodal document differently from a port-to-port bill under Article 20, and the network liability principle by which the applicable regime depends on the leg where the loss occurred.
The unresolved problem is legal rather than commercial. No multimodal liability convention is in force worldwide, so a single document can be governed by different regimes on different legs, and the Rotterdam Rules 2008 were drafted in part to address that.