The article is an attempt to present circumstances that nowadays determine negotiating, conclusion and performance of a multimodal transport contract in Poland. Author focuses in particular on parties’ approach, their business and legal conscience in this respect, as well as their decisions’ practical consequences. Doctrinal aspects of a multimodal transport contract are taken into account only as long as it is essential in examining the most common practices of the parties to the contract. Due to particular character of this publication, the method of author’s views presentation is as brief as possible.

In the beginnings of COVID-19 pandemic outbreak public opinion has been con-centrated on the tragic events taking place at the cruise ships, where the new virus has spread substantially. It is not the first outbreak of the infectious disease at a cruise ship. The following article aims at presenting the relevant case law of the British courts that have considered carrier’s liability for passengers’ claims in relation to personal injury caused by the outbreak of gastrointestinal illnesses caused by the norovirus. Fur-thermore, the readers will be familiarized with the legal situation of injured passengers under the American law.

The bill of lading is one of the most important transport documents in maritime trade. Due to certain contract-like features it exhibits, it is sometimes incorrectly identified as a contract for the carriage of cargo by sea. The purpose of this article is to present the features of the bill of lading that exclude the possibility of equating this document with a contract for the carriage of goods by sea. A bill of lading is not a contract, but a unilateral declaration of the carrier’s will, in which the carrier confirms acceptance of the cargo on the ship and undertakes to deliver it to the legitimate recipient at the port of destination. A bill of lading is a transport document for cargo and a commodity security. For this reason, it cannot be said that a bill of lading is merely an evidence of the conclusion of a contract for the carriage of goods by sea.

A numerical model of the high-speed train carriage fire is established in this study. The influence of ceilings, sidewalls, luggage racks, seats, and floors on the heat release rate (HRR) of the high-speed train is studied by numerical methods. The results indicate that the heat release rate per unit area (HRRPUA) of ceiling and seat material dramatically influences the peak HRR and the time to peak HRR of train carriage fire. When the peak HRRPUA of interior ceiling material 1 decreases from 326 to 110 kW/m2, the peak HRR of the high-speed train fire decreases from 36.4 to 16.5 MW, with a reduction ratio of 54.7%. When seat materials with low HRRPUA are used, the peak HRR reduction ratio is 44.8%. The HRRPUA of the sidewall, luggage rack, and floor materials has little effect on the peak HRR of the carriage fire. However, the non-combustible luggage rack can delay the time when the HRR reaches its peak.