[Casebrief]

In January 2018, Tianjin Zhizhen booked space from QuanzhouAntong Logistics Company for

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two containers of cargoes to be transported from Tianjin Port, with the declared cargo name of “ceramic frit”. On January 17, Beijiang Maritime SafetyAdministration inspected the cargos and collected samples for test. According to the Test Report and the Hazardous Properties Classification and Identification Report, the main ingredient of the sample was sodium hydroxide, which should be stored and transported as hazardous chemical. On March 23, Beijiang Maritime SafetyAdministration issued a Decision of Maritime Administrative Penalty according to relevant regulations on the ground that Zhizhen falsely declared hazardous chemical as ordinary cargo for shipment, imposing an administrative penalty of RMB 109,000. Zhizhen refused to accept such penalty and applied to Tianjin Maritime Safety Administration for administrative review. Tianjin Maritime Safety Administration issued a Decision of Administrative Review to Zhizhen and upheld the administrative penalty imposed by Beijiang Maritime SafetyAdministration. Zhizhen still refused to accept the decision and filed a lawsuit toTianjinMaritime Court.

[Judicialdecision]

In the first-instance trial, Tianjin Maritime Court held the opinion that the underlying administrative penalty and the decision of review were issued according to legal procedures based on correct applicable laws and regulations, and rejected the plaintiff’s claim for cancellation of the penalty and the decision. The plaintiff appealed, but Tianjin Higher People’s Courtupheldtheoriginaljudgmentinthesecond-instancejudgment.

[Significance]

It is an important guarantee for maintaining the overall social stability and achieving high-quality economic development to improve the ability of risk prevention and control and to focus on major risk mitigation. In marine cargo transport, the carrier’s transport of dangerous goods as ordinary goods due to misrepresentation of dangerous goods by the cargo owner may easily cause major safety hazards. In this case, the plaintiff Zhizhen insisted that under similar law violation circumstances, the amounts of penalties imposed by other local maritime administrations in China were less than that imposed by Beijiang Maritime Safety Administration, with a problem of “different punishment in similar cases”. The collegiate bench, after strict examination of administrative penalty and in combination with the specific violation circumstance in this case, determined that it was not improper for Beijiang Maritime SafetyAdministrationtoimposea penaltyofRMB109,000withintherangeof“RMB100,000 to RMB 200,000” specified in the Regulations on the Control over Safety of Dangerous Chemicals. This case was selected as one of the top ten influential cases of the courts inTianjin in2019.