Dutch legal regime to be adapted
ALAN PEAT
A STEP closer to legislation for road transport liability in SA is to be taken this week, when the Maritime Law Association (MLA) starts to adapt the Dutch legal regime for local application.
“We’ve dispensed with bits of this Dutch legislation that refer to other legal codes in that country,” said Andrew Robinson, director of Durban lawyers Deneys Reitz, and chairman of the road, rail, air and sea sub-committee of the MLA.
“A draft of the revised legislation has now been prepared, and will be our basis to work on.
“We’ll now have to adapt this until we can make it suitable for SA application.”
Meanwhile, Robinson has no argument - except one - with the case put forward by AntwerpLaw’s Frank Stevens to base local legislation on the European CMR Convention. (See right)
“It applies only in Europe,” he said, “and refers to international road transport of goods, not domestic carriage.”
But the MLA has not rejected
the CMR.
“Indeed,” Robinson told FTW, “we’re already drafting an SA version of the convention.
“But we’re preparing this for overborder traffic within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) where problems of liability
also arise.
“However, for domestic road transport, we have found that the Dutch legal code is best suited to what we want in SA.”
