Hague-Visby Rules: Carrier Duties, Defenses, and Claim Limits

Under the Hague-Visby Rules, an ocean carrier is liable for cargo loss or damage when it fails to exercise due diligence to make the ship seaworthy or fails to properly load, stow, carry, care for, and discharge the goods, but recovery is capped at the greater of 666.67 Special Drawing Rights per package or 2 SDRs per kilogram of gross weight. The Hague-Visby Rules on carrier liability apply automatically to most international ocean bills of lading issued in or shipped from a contracting state, and any claim has to clear a strict one-year deadline to survive.¹

When the Rules Govern Your Shipment

Article X sets the reach of the treaty. The Rules apply to any bill of lading covering carriage between ports in two different countries, provided the bill of lading is issued in a contracting state or the voyage begins in one. Either trigger is enough on its own, so the Rules can still bite even if the destination sits in a country that never signed the treaty.¹ Most EU member states, Japan, Singapore, Canada, Australia and dozens of others have adopted the framework.

Coverage runs tackle-to-tackle. That means the carrier’s responsibility under the Rules starts when the cargo is attached to the ship’s loading gear and ends when it is released from the discharge gear at the destination port. Damage during inland trucking, rail movement, or warehouse storage before loading or after discharge falls outside the Rules and is governed by other law.

Contracts can also pull the Rules in voluntarily. A “Clause Paramount” written into a bill of lading or charterparty incorporates the full framework, including seaworthiness duties, defenses, and liability caps, even where the treaty would not apply by its own force. This is common in charterparty arrangements.

Cargo the Rules Do Not Cover

Two categories of goods sit outside the definition in Article I. Live animals are excluded entirely. Deck cargo is excluded only when the contract of carriage says the goods will be carried on deck and they are in fact carried there.² If your goods end up on deck without the bill of lading saying so, the carrier cannot use the exclusion and the Rules still protect you. The reverse is also true: once the bill declares deck stowage and the carrier follows through, the protections drop away.

What the Carrier Must Do

Two duties sit at the heart of carrier liability.

The first is seaworthiness. Article III, Rule 1 requires the carrier to exercise due diligence before and at the start of the voyage to make the vessel seaworthy, to properly crew it, and to prepare all cargo spaces, including refrigerated compartments, so they are fit to receive and protect the goods.² This is not a guarantee of a flawless ship, but it is an overriding duty. A carrier that fails on seaworthiness cannot fall back on any of the Article IV defenses, even if a storm or fire also contributed to the loss.³

The second is care of cargo. Article III, Rule 2 requires the carrier to properly and carefully load, handle, stow, carry, keep, care for, and discharge the goods.² When cargo arrives short, wet, or crushed, this is usually the duty being tested.

The Bill of Lading as Proof

Under Article III, Rule 4, the bill of lading is prima facie evidence that the carrier received the goods as described on its face. Against the original shipper, the carrier can try to prove otherwise. Once the bill is transferred to a good-faith third party, though, the description becomes conclusive.² Banks financing cargo purchases and downstream buyers rely on that conclusiveness.

Defenses the Carrier Can Raise

Article IV, Rule 2 lists seventeen situations in which the carrier is not answerable for loss or damage. The main ones:

Errors in navigation or in the management of the ship by the master, pilot, or crew. This “nautical fault” defense is the single biggest gap between maritime and land carriage, where the carrier normally answers for its driver’s mistakes.
Fire, unless caused with the actual fault or privity of the carrier.²
Perils, dangers, and accidents of the sea.
Acts of God, acts of war, and acts of public enemies.
Arrest or restraint by governments, or quarantine restrictions.
Acts or omissions of the shipper or cargo owner.
Strikes, lockouts, or labor stoppages.
Saving or attempting to save life or property at sea.
Inherent vice or defect of the goods themselves, such as fruit ripening or metal corroding.
Insufficient packing or inadequate marks.
Latent defects in the vessel not discoverable by due diligence.
Any other cause arising without the carrier’s actual fault, with the burden on the carrier to prove it.²

How the Burden of Proof Runs

The claim moves in stages. The cargo owner first has to show the goods were in good condition when loaded and damaged when discharged. The burden then shifts to the carrier to show the loss came from one of the excepted causes. For most defenses, the carrier does not have to affirmatively disprove its own negligence; showing an excepted peril was at work is enough.⁴

Inherent vice is the exception. After the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Volcafe, a carrier relying on inherent vice has to prove it fulfilled its Article III, Rule 2 duty of care and that the damage would have happened anyway. Pointing to the cargo’s natural tendencies is not enough when reasonable precautions were not taken.

Seaworthiness runs on its own track. If the claimant shows the vessel was unseaworthy and that this contributed to the loss, the carrier has to prove it exercised due diligence. Without that showing, no Article IV defense is available.

How Much You Can Recover

When the carrier is liable, Article IV, Rule 5 caps the payout at the higher of two figures:

666.67 Special Drawing Rights per package or unit, or
2 SDRs per kilogram of gross weight of the goods lost or damaged.

The claimant gets whichever calculation is larger. The SDR is an international reserve asset maintained by the International Monetary Fund. As of early 2026, one SDR is worth roughly $1.36, putting the per-package cap at about $906 and the per-kilogram cap at about $2.72.²⁵

How Containers Are Counted

Whether a container counts as one package or many turns on the bill of lading. If the bill enumerates the individual items packed inside, each item counts as a separate package for the cap calculation. If the bill just says “one container” without listing the contents, the whole container is a single unit. The gap in recoverable damages between the two treatments can be very large, so itemizing contents on the bill is worth the effort.

Declaring a Higher Value

You can override the caps entirely by declaring the nature and value of the goods before shipment and having that value written into the bill of lading. Once declared, the stated value replaces the SDR limits. Carriers may charge a higher freight rate for declared-value cargo, but for high-value shipments that trade is usually worth making.

When the Cap Falls Away

Article IV, Rule 5(e) strips the carrier of every liability cap where the damage resulted from an act or omission done with intent to cause damage, or recklessly and with knowledge that damage would probably result.² Deliberate stowage in a leaking hold or knowing disregard of safety protocols is the kind of conduct this reaches.

How to File a Claim

Article III, Rule 6 sets two procedural hurdles, and both catch cargo owners out.

Notice comes first. For damage that is visible on delivery, you have to give the carrier written notice of the loss or damage at the port of discharge, before or at the time you take custody of the goods. If the damage is not apparent on delivery, you have three days from delivery to give written notice. Missing the notice window does not kill the claim outright, but it means the carrier is presumed to have delivered the goods as described in the bill of lading. You are then arguing uphill.²

The hard deadline is the one-year time bar. Suit has to be filed within one year of the date the goods were delivered or should have been delivered. Miss it and the claim is gone, regardless of the merits. Parties can agree to extend the period, but only after the cause of action has arisen, so you cannot pre-negotiate an extension into the original bill of lading.²

If Your Shipment Touches the United States

The United States never ratified the Hague-Visby Rules. U.S. ocean cargo shipments are instead governed by the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), the U.S. enactment of the original 1924 Hague Rules. The core carrier duties and the catalogue of defenses look very similar, but the numbers differ in ways that matter:

COGSA caps liability at $500 per package, well below the 666.67 SDRs (roughly $906) under Hague-Visby, and it has no per-kilogram alternative, so heavy bulk shipments do particularly poorly.
Both regimes allow reasonable deviation from the planned route, but COGSA adds a presumption that deviating to load or unload cargo or passengers is unreasonable.
Both impose the same one-year deadline to file suit.

When a bill of lading expressly incorporates the Hague-Visby Rules and the shipment leaves a Visby-contracting state, U.S. courts have sometimes applied the higher Visby cap instead of COGSA’s $500 limit. The outcome depends on the exact contract wording and the circuit, and this remains an area of active litigation.

1
Jus Mundi. Protocol to Amend the International Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules of Law Relating to Bills of Lading (1968)
2
Dutch Civil Law. Hague-Visby Rules
3
Steamship Mutual. Hague / Hague-Visby Defences
4
UK P&I. QCR Spring 2017: The Court of Appeal Confirms That a Carrier Does Not Need to Disprove Negligence to Rely on Defences Under Article IV Rule 2
5
International Monetary Fund. SDRs per Currency Unit and Currency Units per SDR