Adoption of U.S. Carriage of Goods by Sea Act

Commonwealth Act No. 65 accepts Public Act Numbered Five hundred and twenty-one of the Seventy-fourth Congress of the United States, approved on April sixteenth, nineteen hundred and thirty-six.
The accepted U.S. statute is entitled “Carriage of Goods by Sea Act.”
Section 1 makes the accepted U.S. provisions applicable to covered contracts involving carriage of goods by sea to and from Philippine ports.
Section 1 expressly links its coverage to contracts, not to a general regulation of shipping outside contractual terms.

The Act recognizes the “primordial purpose” of the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act as bringing about uniformity in ocean bills of lading.
The Act recognizes that the U.S. statute is designed to give effect to the Brussels Treaty, signed by the United States with other powers.
The Act records that the Government of the United States left to the Philippine Government the decision whether the U.S. Act would apply to carriage of goods by sea in foreign trade to and from Philippine ports.
The Act states that the accepted statute contains advanced legislation aligned with modern maritime rules and the practices of major shipping countries.
The Act records that shipping companies, shippers, marine insurance companies, and chambers of commerce expressed a desire to extend the U.S. Congressional Act to the Philippines.

Section 1 applies to all contracts for the carriage of goods by sea to and from Philippine ports in foreign trade.
The geographic reach is tied to the carriage of goods to and from Philippine ports.
The trade criterion is foreign trade, for carriage of goods by sea under covered contracts.
The operative coverage is contractual: the U.S. Act’s provisions govern the contracts for carriage of goods by sea within the specified foreign-trade and port-to-port context.

Section 1 provides a protection clause: nothing in Commonwealth Act No. 65 is construed as repealing any existing provision of the Code of Commerce now in force.
Section 1 further provides that nothing in Commonwealth Act No. 65 limits the application of the Code of Commerce provisions.
Section 1 therefore preserves the continued operation of existing Code of Commerce rules alongside the accepted Carriage of Goods by Sea Act provisions for covered contracts.