Cite as: 515 U. S. 528 (1995)
Stevens, J., dissenting
dle' in the way of enforcing liability, Gilmore & Black, supra, 125 n. 23, and thus is an effective means for carriers to secure settlements lower than if cargo could sue in a convenient forum. A clause making a claim triable only in a foreign court would almost certainly lessen liability if the law which the court would apply was neither the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act nor the Hague Rules. Even when the foreign court would apply one or the other of these regimes, requiring trial abroad might lessen the carrier's liability since there could be no assurance that it would apply them in the same way as would an American tribunal subject to the uniform control of the Supreme Court, and § 3(8) can well be read as covering a potential and not simply a demonstrable lessening of liability." Id., at 203-204 (citations omitted).
As the Court notes, ante, at 533, the Courts of Appeals without exception have followed Indussa. In the 1975 edition of their treatise, Gilmore and Black also endorsed its holding, adding this comment:
"Cogsa allows a freedom of contracting out of its terms, but only in the direction of increasing the shipowner's liabilities, and never in the direction of diminishing them. This apparent onesidedness is a commonsense recognition of the inequality in bargaining power which both Harter and Cogsa were designed to redress, and of the fact that one of the great objectives of both Acts is to prevent the impairment of the value and negotiability of the ocean bill of lading. Obviously, the latter result can never ensue from the increase of the carrier's duties." G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty 145- 147 (2d ed.) (emphasis in original; footnote omitted).
Thus, our interpretation of maritime law prior to the enactment of the Harter Act, our reading of that statute in Knott, and the federal courts' consistent interpretation of
547
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007