Subrogation Time-Bars: CGSA 2025's One Year, MTGA 1993's Nine Months

The one-year bar is unchanged in substance but re-enacted in a new statute — a distinction that matters for every notice, pleading and internal checklist that still cites "COGSA 1925." The Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 2025 (Act No. 19 of 2025), assented on 8 August 2025 and in force from 10 September 2025, repeals the Indian Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 1925 (s. 12(1)) while saving accrued rights and pending proceedings (s. 12(2)). Its Schedule, Art III(6)(c), provides that the carrier and the ship are "discharged from all liability in respect of loss or damage unless suit is brought within one year after delivery of the goods or the date when the goods should have been delivered," with two escape valves: the parties may extend the period by agreement made after the cause of action has arisen, and a court may allow suit within a further period of not more than three months.

Both valves are narrower than they look. The agreement route requires the carrier's consent, sought while the claimant still has leverage — which means before expiry, in writing, against a named shipment. The court's three-month discretion is a residual mercy, not a plan. For losses on shipments delivered before 10 September 2025, the 1925 Act's identical rule continues to govern through the savings clause — so a 2026 claims desk runs both regimes, keyed to delivery date.

Section 24 of the MTGA 1993 is the sharper trap because it is both shorter and quieter: the multimodal transport operator "shall not be liable under any of the provisions of this Act unless action against him is brought within nine months" of delivery, the date the goods should have been delivered, or the date the claimant becomes entitled to treat them as lost (s. 13(2)). The Act remains in force unamended on this point (consolidated text as on 15.05.2026), and it attaches whenever the contract is a multimodal transport document issued by a registered MTO for carriage by at least two modes — precisely the structure of most Indian door-to-door container exports moving inland by rail or road before the gateway port.

The identification question is therefore the first calendar entry: which document governs this movement? An exporter holding a house document from an MTO may assume the familiar one-year ocean rule while the nine-month clock runs. The companion notice windows differ the same way — three days for non-apparent loss under the sea-carriage Schedule, six consecutive days under MTGA s. 20(2) — and both are evidence-preservation deadlines: notice given in time shifts the presumption of sound delivery back onto the carrier.

The preventive discipline is to compute the clocks at shipment, not at loss. Every shipment file can carry, from the day the transport document is issued: the governing regime (sea-carriage or multimodal, decided from the document actually issued), the delivery date once known, and the derived dates — notice window, nine-month expiry, one-year expiry, and an internal action date well before the earlier of them for lodging suit or extracting the carrier's written extension. Because subrogation under s. 79 transfers rights as they stand, each of these dates is an insurance document as much as a legal one: a claims file that shows the countdown was tracked and the carrier held to account is a file that leaves the insurer no procedural exit.

TradeWatch generates this countdown as part of its Marine Cargo Insurance Broker Packet — the governing-document determination, the computed notice and suit deadlines, and alerts as they approach, each anchored to the statutory text it derives from. Kanan Labs prepares claim-admissible evidence and deadline intelligence. It does not advise on, select, or bind insurance, and it does not conduct litigation — your IRDAI-licensed broker and your counsel act; the packet keeps their clock honest.