Limitation of Liability

Limitation of liability lets a shipowner, charterer, or salvor cap aggregate liability for most maritime claims at a tonnage-based fund, breakable only by proof of personal intent or recklessness with knowledge that the loss would probably result. The governing treaty is the LLMC 1976, as raised by its 1996 Protocol, which entered into force on 13 May 2004 and increased the limits roughly two-and-a-half-fold; the 2012 amendments lifted them again from June 2015. Oil-pollution and wreck claims sit under their own separate regimes.