Reprinted with permission from Marine Digest and Transportation News
Our industry is particularly susceptible to the nasty effects of nature, the whims of international politics, labor disputes, and numerous other unanticipated circumstances. Many maritime contracts, including bills of lading and service contracts, often try to accommodate the unpredictable. They include provisions freeing participants from their contractual obligations or liability based on events of force majeure. Depending on the source of form documentation (or its author’s penchant), you sometimes see those provisions cast in terms of vis major, or the more contemporary "Act of God."
So what kind of circumstance constitutes force majeure (or one of its cousins)? What kind of event is so extraordinary that the law will let someone off the hook for acts or omissions that otherwise would amount to actionable negligence or breach of contract? The French term literally means "greater force" (vis major is the
