The Exceptions in Documentary Credits in English Law

Abstract

The main subject of this thesis is the exceptions in documentary credits in English law. The exceptions were established during the development of the documentary credits system to solve drawbacks of the payment means caused by its distinctive feature of autonomy. A rationale of the research is the current decline of the market share of documentary credits as a recognized means of settlement in international trade. This thesis aims to explore an appropriate and efficient way to apply certain necessary exceptions in documentary credits system. And hopefully, the current high rate of the rejection of the documents by banks by relying on the strict compliance principle can be decreased by the improving of the application of exceptions in documentary credits.

The research centres primary the application of the exceptions in English law. An early study of the original development of the fraud exception will cover both English and American authorities. Because there is no statute law in English law to regulate the exceptions in documentary credits, the thesis will analyse the exceptions mostly through the case law. The main exceptions analysed in the thesis are the fraud rule, the illegality exception and the nullity exception. The application pattern for the three exceptions will be worked out respectively; the specific application of the injunction rules in applying the fraud rule will be concluded during the analysis of the fraud rule; some common features in the application among the exceptions will also be summarized in the thesis. An effort is made to suggest a prospective development of exceptions, which is in consistent with the autonomy principle. And as the necessary exceptions are applied efficiently, the disputes existing in documentary credits system currently may be settled without the appliance of any explanatory rules.