Two recent cases in the High Court are of considerable interest. They both relate to the problem of the sub-contracting warehouseman and the extent to which he can rely upon his general conditions of contract in relationship to the owner of goods with whom he has not entered into a contract himself. Given the existence of privity of contract and the fact that no stipulation “pour autrui” exists at the Common Law it is clear that the courts are experiencing some difficulty in dealing with such problems which increasingly arise in relationship to combined transport operations.

In the first case of Johnson Matthey & Co. Ltd. v. Constantine Terminals Ltd. and International Express Co. Ltd.1 the plaintiff was the owner of a shipment of silver grain which was to be forwarded to Milan. The plaintiff company employed the second defendant to forward the goods for them. In furtherance of this, the latter employed a carrier to transport the goods to the first defendant’s warehouse at the London International Freight Terminal. The warehouseman was unable to place the shipment in secured premises and was also unable to adopt the normal alternative of placing the goods straight into a railway truck as none was available. The container holding the goods was therefore placed among similar containers in the shed. Thieves broke in and stole the silver. The contract between the plaintiff shipper and the forwarder (second defendant) was subject to the Standard Trading Conditions of the IFF, 1956 Edition. A similar contract was entered into by the forwarder and the warehouseman which also restricted the warehouseman’s liability to loss due to the wilful neglect or default of the company or its own servants, together with a maximum financial limit of liability of £50 a ton.

IFF Standard Trading Conditions adequately protected the forwarder and the action by the shipper against the second defendant therefore failed. Here, in passing, it may be noted that Donaldson, J., considered that the forwarder was in fact acting as a carrier, and although the use of IFF Standard Trading Conditions rendered the question irrelevant, it is not clear that on the facts the court are correct in so interpreting the forwarder’s status. A steady series of cases exist in which the courts have attempted to steer ‘twixt Scylla and Charybdis in deciding whether a forwarder is a mere agent or a principal, but it is felt that as in the case of J. Evans & Sons (Portsmouth) Ltd. v. Andrea Merzario Ltd.2, the true status of the forwarder in this case was that of a “transportation contractor” or combined transport operator.

Turning to the shipper’s action against the warehouseman, the question arose as to whether the latter could rely upon his Standard Conditions of Contract in an action against him by the shipper with whom he was not in direct contractual relationship. The warehouseman held the goods under a contract of sub-bailment