BILL OF LADING

Types of Bill of Lading

Negotiable/Non Negotiable Bill of Lading

Negotiable bills of lading are bills of lading which ca be transferred to a third party by endorsement.

Therefore, the bill of lading must meet the following two conditions:

— it must be drawn up to order or to bearer;

—it has to be clean.

It follows that bills of lading to a named person and bills of lading with restrictive clauses (with regard to the quantity and the condition of the goods) are not negotiable.

In case of a bill of lading to a named person, only the consignee on who's name the bill of lading was made out, has the right to receive the goods.

Basically, the Hague Rules and the Hague-Visby Rules don't apply to a bill of lading which has been issued to named person because the Hague Rules and the Hague-Visby Rules only apply to a negotiable bill of lading. In some countries there may be some exceptions to this rule.

The Conlinebill, the Conbiconbill, the Multidoc, etc. can all be issued as negotiable bills of lading and will, as such, be accepted by banks in order to obtain a documentary credit.

Non-negotiable bills of lading are bills of lading that, due to their nature, cannot be transferred to a third party. However, there a number of documents which are used as a replacement of the bill of lading and which, naturally, are never negotiable such as: the Sea Waybill, the Data Freight Receipt and the House Bill of Lading.

These non-negotiable documents came into being, out of necessity to create a document that didn't have to be presented to the master at destination. The goods are delivered to the named consignee in the document who only has to prove his identity.

NOTE

In principle, all bills of lading such as: the Conlinebill, the Conbiconbill, etc. can be issued as non-negotiable bills of lading.

[ back to top ]