Extra-contractual liability of the carrier in terms of Dutch law
On 18 December 2015 the Dutch Supreme Court ruled on the ‘Transfennica’ case (ECLI:NL:HR:2015:3624). In short, the facts of this case are as follows. A Finnish company undertook to arrange for transportation of Nokia goods from Roosendaal (the Netherlands) to Moscow (Russia). For that purpose this Finnish company via an intermediary sub-subcontracted Transfennica Logistics B.V.B.A, which in its turn subcontracted a Ducth carrier for the transportation of the goods from Roosendaal (the Netherlands) to Hamina (Finland). On request of Transfennica this Dutch carrier submitted data about containers. Apparently, the data about two of the three containers were mistakenly confused with each other. Transfennica forwarded these data to the Finnish company, which based on the info provided by Transfennica prepared the documents for a Customs clearance at the Russian border. The goods were successfully delivered to Hamina and handed over to a second actual carrier which was subcontracted by the Finnish company for the rest of the transportation from Hamina to Russia. Due to the above mentioned mistake in the submitted data about containers the goods were detained at the Russian border by the Customs and directed to a warehouse.