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The Roots And False Aspersions Of Shipowner's Limitation Of Liability, Graydon S. Staring

Graydon S. Staring

Limitation of enterprise liability is today so commonplace that we see notice of it all around us in the words “incorporated” and “limited” and their abbreviations, and take it for granted that any sizeable business and many small ones enjoy limited liability. It was not always so, and long before it became generally available ashore the pioneers of enterprise liability limitation were shipowners. That it has survived the development and ready availability of corporate limitation is at first remarkable but becomes quite understandable when its history, its foundations in the policy of maritime nations, its relation to modern commercial maritime …