Unified Criteria for Differentiating Freight Forwarding and Transportation Contracts in the Context of Legal Liability

Abstract

Transport law represents a highly ambivalent category in terms of its methodological scope. It encompasses a variety of interrelated legal institutions and relationships. A single, codified document claiming to comprehensively regulate all aspects of transport relations does not exist in Western European democratic states. For this reason, transport law is often described as a “fragmented” body of law, consisting of substantively diverse, yet thematically closely related, regulatory frameworks governed by different legislative acts.

Transport law can be said to operate on multiple levels. The first is the domestic, national level, which constitutes the primary regulatory tier. The core agreements that form the backbone of transport law are codified in civil or commercial codes. This is followed by the supranational level, represented primarily by regulations of the European Union. Of particular significance within transport law are the legal relations connected to international transport, which, in turn, constitute the international regulatory tier.

The present article is dedicated, on the one hand, to examining the generalizing criteria that qualify freight forwarding and carriage contracts, based on the FIATA framework, and, on the other hand, to analyzing the regulatory models of Georgian and German law in the context of their alignment and harmonization with unified standards. The study of these generalizing criteria at the supranational level carries significant practical implications for distinguishing the functions and duties of carriers and freight forwarders, as well as their associated legal liability regimes. The research further explores international efforts to unify freight forwarder liability and emphasizes the necessity of expanding contractual autonomy under conditions of deregulated liability at the unified international level.