carriage or in the carriage of the goods. New contracting techniques and routing patterns have made this a common practice in modern liner shipping. Although commercial settings differ, the most typical cases arise when a shipping line uses chartered tonnage in its service, or when the line transships the goods to on-carriers, or when it offers through-carriage services. In all these cases the central problem is the allocation of cargo liabilities. One question is whether the carrier who concluded the contract with the transport user2 is liable for loss or damage that occurs while the goods are in the custody of another carrier, or in other words, whether he remains responsible for the goods during the entire carriage. A second question relates to the responsibility of a carrier who has made no contract with the transport user but performs all or part of the carriage. In this field the Hague-Visby Rules give only indirect guidance and the solutions adopted by national courts differ considerably. (See infra ? 2) To transport users much of this case law was quite unsatisfactory. In the Scandinavian countries this led to revision of the law in 1973-75 when the Hague-Visby Rules were incorporated