The one-year time bar on a cargo claim

A time bar is the deadline after which a cargo claim can no longer be brought at all. Most container bills of lading on EU and UK trades apply the Hague-Visby Rules. Under those rules the deadline is one year from the day the goods were delivered — or from the day they should have been delivered, if they never arrived. Miss it and the merits stop mattering.

It is a hard stop rather than a guideline. A claim that would have succeeded on every point is worth nothing the day after, and no amount of correspondence in the meantime preserves it. Only proceedings started, or a written extension agreed, stop the clock.

The three-day notice is a different thing #

These two get confused constantly, and they do different jobs.

Notice of damage — at delivery for damage you can see, within three days for damage you cannot — is about evidence. Give it, and the burden stays where you want it. Miss it, and the carrier is treated as having delivered the cargo in the condition its transport document described, so you now have to prove it did not. The claim survives; it just got harder.

The one-year bar is about the claim itself, and there is nothing on the other side of it.

Extensions are normal, and you have to ask #

Carriers grant written time-bar extensions routinely, usually in three- or six-month steps, while a survey is finished or a quantum is agreed. Nobody offers one. The request has to reach them before the year expires, and the reply has to be in writing from someone with authority to give it.

Two things catch importers out. A claim against a freight forwarder rather than the line may run under different terms with a shorter period. And where your cargo insurer will be pursuing the carrier afterwards, the policy makes protecting this deadline your obligation, not theirs.

FAQ #

When does the one-year time bar start? #

At delivery of the cargo, or at the date it should have been delivered if it was lost. Not at the date you discovered the damage, and not at the date your buyer issued a debit note. A claim that surfaces slowly through a supply chain can be most of a year old before anyone looks at the deadline.

Can a time bar be extended? #

Yes, by written agreement with the carrier, and it is granted as a matter of routine when a claim is genuinely still being worked out. It cannot be extended after it has expired, so the request has to go in with time to spare.

Does sending a claim letter stop the clock? #

No. Correspondence, however firm, has no effect on the deadline. Only issuing proceedings in the right forum, or obtaining a written extension, protects the claim.