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Carriers' Legal Liability

A transporter's or forwarder's liability to its customers for goods lost or damaged while in its custody.

Also calledCarriers' Legal Liability · CLL · Freight Forwarders' Liability

File/Claims library/Liability/Goods in transit

First thing, todayTake the consignor's claim in writing, do not admit it, and notify the insurer the same day.

Three deadlines
  • Tell the insurer now, not after the assessment.
  • Notice to the transporter in writing, within the time your policy sets.
  • Every document within the time the insurer asks for it.
A goods vehicle overturned on a highway
A goods vehicle overturned on a highway. An illustration.

When you would claim

  • A consignor claims for goods damaged or lost in your custody
  • Goods stolen from your vehicle, godown or transhipment hub
  • An accident to your vehicle damaging the load
  • A claim passed on by a customer under their own contract

What insurers most often rely on

  • Liability admitted to the consignor without consent
  • Goods of a kind excluded, or above the declared value per vehicle
  • Carriage on a route or in conditions outside the policy
  • The statutory or contractual limit of liability not pleaded
  • Driver not properly licensed for the vehicle

On a liability claim these are opening positions. Opening positions are argued, and the insurer expects them to be.

The documents

half of it belongs to the other side

10 items, and half of them are somebody else's. Get the allegation in writing early: an insurer cannot tell you what is covered until it can read what is being said against you.

  • Claim form and the consignor's written claim
  • The consignment note and the contract of carriage
  • Your own vehicle and driver records for the trip
  • FIR where theft or an accident is involved
  • Survey report on the goods
  • Proof of the value of the goods carried
  • Evidence of what you actually did to protect the goods
  • Cancelled cheque and bank details in the insured's name, for the NEFT payment
  • Details of any other insurance covering the same risk
  • The consignor’s claim on you, with the invoice value and the consignment note it rests on
Every letter, datedA liability file is a correspondence file. Log the date each notice arrived, the date you passed it on, and the date the insurer replied. Delay is the first thing argued and the easiest to answer.

Next

Commercial Vehicle Claim: What to Do

Commercial motor claims are refused on paperwork far more often than on the facts of the collision: the licence, the permit, the fitness, the load.

Most often lost by: Authorising repairs before the survey, and discovering afterwards that the driver's licence was not valid for that class of vehicle.

Read the limit of indemnity

No sum insured and no average clause. A liability policy is capped by its limit of indemnity, written as one figure for any one accident and a larger one for the year, with defence costs sometimes inside that limit and sometimes outside it. Which of the two it is matters more than the figure.

Filed under: Liability · Goods in transit

Claims that sit next to this one

the same allegation, answered elsewhere

Inland Transit

the same goods, insured by their owner

Commercial Vehicle Damage

the lorry, as against what it carries

Public Liability

harm to anybody who is not the customer

Consignment short and the carrier gone quiet? Report a loss or call 92514 56334.