Gill Nadel, Adv.
An Israeli exporter committed to supply 2000 tons of old iron rails to China. The exporter contracted with a customs agent to perform the export processes, and with a marine carrier to ship to China. The exporters packaged the cargo into containers and the cargo was loaded onto the boat, but in the course of the journey, the need arose, for specific reasons that will be detailed later, to empty the containers and repackage the cargo. This process entailed additional costs to the exporter and loss of profits for it. Because of these damages, the exporter sued the customs agent, the marine carrier, and the ship agent.
The court rejected the exporter’s action against all sides.
Regarding the suit against the marine carrier and the ship agent, the court ruled that the principle reason for the repackaging was due to incorrect original packaging of the cargo, failure to secure the cargo and failure to reinforce the containers with wooden planks. The court ruled that under these circumstances the marine carrier had the right to request that the cargo be repackaged properly, and therefore the additional costs of the marine carrier for repackaging expenses were justified.
Regarding the suit against the customs agent, the suit was based on the fact that the customs agent provided the marine carrier with an incorrect temporary loading declaration, which was based on arbitrary data and which included incorrect information about the cargo weight (the declaration noted a lower cargo weight than was actually the case).
The court ruled, among other things, that the customs agent was negligent towards the export in that it issued the temporary declaration with arbitrary content, and in that it did not inform the exporter of the dispatch of this declaration or its content. The customs agent was further negligent in that it did not inform the exporter that if a detailed loading declaration was not given within 24 hours from the dispatch of the temporary declaration and before the ship’s sailing- is was possible that the cargo would not be loaded onto the ship.
At the same time, the court did not obligate the customs agent to compensate the exporter for its damage, since there was no causal relationship between the customs agent’s negligence and the damaged caused to the exporter. This is because the damage was caused not due to extra cargo in the containers about which there was no declaration to the marine carrier, and because the cargo was not properly packaged. The court ruled that the customs agent need not have foreseen that the packaging was done improperly, since the customs agent took no part in the packaging, and only actively handled a few of the issues routinely handled by international forwarders.
Commentary:
This decision deals with a customs agent who basically also wore the hat of an international forwarder who acted as shipping coordinator (and not as a forwarder who acts as a carrier and issues the bill of lading) and, fundamentally, the court is ready to but responsibility even on a shipping coordinator when he is negligent in performing his duties as a coordinator (for example- transfer of loading declarations in the name of the exporter).
תא 0318000/03, Local Court of Tel Aviv, decision given 23.4.07
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