The Journal of Critical Analysis of Judicial Decisions

The Journal of Critical Analysis of Judicial Decisions

The Liability of the carriers' commercial agent against the owner of the goods (Criticism of the unanimous ruling No. 29 dated 8/28/1363 of the Supreme Court)

Document Type : A critique of a Cassation Court's decision

Author
mojtaba Eshraghi Arani
Private law department, Faculty of law and political science, University of Tehran
10.22034/analysis.2024.2007530.1035
Abstract
Many contractual and administrative services of carriers, especially in the field of sea transportation, are provided by their commercial representatives, so that in most cases, traders, especially shippers, only deal with the representative and basically do not communicate with the carrier or the ship owner. This issue is especially prominent when the shipping operation is carried out by a foreign shipping company. However, after damage to the cargo or violation of the carrier's obligations for any reason, the commercial representative benefits from the immunity resulting from the "principle of non-responsibility of the representative for original actions" and in this regard, the Supreme Court of the Supreme Court has considered the case of the sender against the commercial representative of the carrier to be inadmissible in the unanimous ruling No. 29 dated 10/7/1363.This is despite the fact that the said decision was issued by some business representatives regardless of their role as a contract holder, and on the other hand, in the case of foreign transport operators, it obliges traders to refer to foreign transport companies that do not have any property or assets in Iran, and in this way, many maritime losses of traders remain uncompensated.
Keywords
carrier
commercial agent
liability
unanimous decision
number 29
General Board
Supreme Court