Fullard offers specialist legal advice to forwarders

SPECIALISATION IS the name of the game when it comes to maritime law, and at Fullard Mayer and Morrison freight forwarders are the speciality. "One of the main problems with freight forwarders is the nomenclature," says William Fullard. "Because they're called clearing and forwarding agents, they think they are immune to claims from the client." This couldn't be further from the truth. As contractual carriers they can be sued by the client for negligence when something goes wrong. And many misconceptions result in costly litigation. For example there's a perception that if you're doing business on a COD (cash on delivery) basis the only risk is that you won't be paid. But the forwarder can be held liable in a COD transaction because he is the contractual carrier. A comprehensive set of standard trading conditions would minimise this risk. In fact, diligent attention to documentation is a key element of risk prevention generally. A recent case involving a consignment of a carpet manufacturing plant shipped to Mombasa illustrates the point. The containers arrived in Mombasa on a freight collect basis, but the consignee couldn't come up with the cash. This left forty 40 foot containers standing on the quayside, collecting demurrage and all sorts of other penalties. The freight forwarder had, on the bill of lading, inserted his own name as "shipper" rather than that of the client, which meant that the line sued the forwarder as the responsible party. This resulted in a major dispute involving millions of rands, which was finally settled out of court. Forwarders also tend to think that if the customer takes out insurance, he (the forwarder) is covered. But this ignores the fact that when the insurer pays out the shipper he takes cession of the shipper's rights and can sue the party responsible for the loss - who is often the contractual carrier i.e. the freight forwarder. Fullard however advises that specialist legal advice should not only be sought in cases where litigation is involved. Debt collection is just as much an area for specialist advice as is defence against claims. The reason why a debt goes bad is not always simply because the consignee cannot pay, says Fullard. It's often linked to a problem along the transport chain, where specialist knowledge of the industry is a major advantage. Fullard's involvement with the industry goes back eight years when he started collecting debts for Profreight (later to become AEI Profreight and now trading as Danzas AEI). He learnt about the industry from there and has grown with them to become one of an elite group of legal specialists with an intimate understanding of the vagaries of the freight forwarding industry.