In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 99-3903

Tempel Steel Corporation,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

Landstar Inway, Inc.,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 98 C 6839--Suzanne B. Conlon, Judge.

Argued April 10, 2000--Decided May 2, 2000

 Before Easterbrook, Kanne, and Rovner, Circuit Judges.

 Easterbrook, Circuit Judge. En route from

Minster, Ohio, to Monterrey, Mexico, a large

machine press was severely damaged. A motor

carrier had not secured the press properly and

drove too fast; this combination led to the loss,

which cost almost $300,000 to fix. Tempel Steel,

the owner, wants Landstar Inway, its carrier, to

reimburse it for repair costs, and the district

court granted summary judgment in Tempel’s favor

under the Carmack Amendment to the Interstate

Commerce Act, 49 U.S.C. sec.14706. See 1999 U.S.

Dist. Lexis 11018 (N.D. Ill. 1999). But Landstar

insists that it is not liable: a tariff disclaims

all liability for casualties in Mexico, where the

accident occurred, and anyway, Landstar insists,

the loss was the fault of Teresa de Jesus Ortiz

Obregon, a drayage company that Parker & Co., a

customs broker, hired to move the cargo through

U.S. and Mexican customs facilities before

delivery to the Mexican interchange carrier.

 A motor carrier must compensate

the person entitled to recover under the

receipt or bill of lading. The liability

imposed under this paragraph is for the

actual loss or injury to the property

caused by (A) the receiving carrier, (B)

the delivering carrier, or (C) another

carrier over whose line or route the
property is transported in the United

States or from a place in the United

States to a place in an adjacent foreign

country when transported under a through

bill of lading[.]

49 U.S.C. sec.14706(a)(1). Mexico is an adjacent

foreign country; Landstar issued a through bill

of lading; and Tempel is "the person entitled to

recover under the . . . bill of lading." That the

drayage company is "another carrier over whose

line or route the property is transported" does

not relieve Landstar of its liability. Having

issued a through bill of lading (and touted its

"seamless" service), Landstar is responsible for

the entire movement. A shipper may look to its

chosen carrier, which then bears the

responsibility for seeking compensation from

another carrier actually responsible for the

loss. (Landstar’s arrangement with its Mexican

counterpart provides expressly for this; the

originating carrier handles all loss, damage, and

delay claims.) A straightforward application of

the Carmack Amendment supports the district

court’s decision. If Landstar feared that Parker

would use a feckless drayage company, it could

have issued two bills of lading: one from Minster

to U.S. customs, and the other from Mexican

customs to Monterrey. But it did not do this and

is liable for damage caused by intermediate

carriers, no matter who selected them, under

sec.14706(a)(1)(C).

 Nonetheless, Landstar insists, the court should

have applied its tariff in lieu of the Carmack

Amendment. The bill of lading recites that the

press was received "subject to the

classifications and tariffs in effect on the date

of the issue of this Bill of Lading." In December

1997, when it picked up the machine, Landstar

maintained (apparently in its own files) a

document containing this provision:

Carrier’s transportation service to Mexico

shall end at the border point when carrier

delivers the shipment to a designated

interline carrier. . . . At no time shall

Carrier be held liable for any loss or

damage to a shipment within the country of

Mexico.

We doubt that this was a "tariff in effect" in

1997. Until 1995 tariffs had legal effect; the

filed-rate doctrine made it impossible for

shippers and carriers to contract around them.

American Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Central

Office Telephone, Inc., 524 U.S. 214 (1998);

Square D Co. v. Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau,

Inc., 476 U.S. 409 (1986). The ICC Termination

Act, 109 Stat. 803 (1995), abolished the tariff
filing requirement and the filed-rate doctrine,

and it canceled the legal effectiveness of most

extant tariffs. 49 U.S.C. sec.13710(a)(4). See

Munitions Carriers Conference, Inc. v. United

States, 147 F.3d 1027, 1029-30 (D.C. Cir. 1998).

Today carriers adopt standard contractual terms,

which some call "tariffs" out of habit, but which

have no effect apart from their status as

contracts. Landstar’s bill of lading probably

should have been revised to say that it

incorporates "standard terms" rather than

"tariffs in effect"; had it done this, Landstar

could have avoided Tempel’s argument that no

tariff is "in effect" today and that Landstar’s

therefore should be ignored. But it is clear what

the bill of lading was getting at, so we read its

language as incorporating off-the-rack terms.

 Landstar should have written a better set of

terms, because its document does not achieve the

desired goal. Aping language from the Cretaceous

period, this document recites that it governs

"only in connection with tariffs making reference

to the ICC number hereof." This is a mismatch for

modern motor transit. No other tariff makes

"reference to the ICC number hereof" (indeed, the

ICC no longer exists), and if we read the contract

between Tempel and Landstar as the functional

equivalent to a rate tariff, again there is no

reference to Landstar’s rules tariff, by number

or any other identifier. Tempel would not have

had any reason to track down Landstar’s standard

terms, and it has long been established--quite

apart from the language of Landstar’s "tariff"--

that actual notice is necessary for a limitation

of liability to be enforced. Hughes v. United Van

Lines, Inc., 829 F.2d 1407, 1419-20 (7th Cir.

1987). Landstar believes that Hughes should be

limited to situations in which the shippers are

amateurs (in Hughes, the shipper contracted for

the movement of household goods), while

businesses such as Tempel should be satisfied

with constructive notice. Subsection (f) of the

Carmack Amendment establishes one special rule

for shippers of household goods, but neither this

subsection nor any other language in the statute

(or any regulation we could find) requires

businesses to scrounge for limitations that have

not been flagged by the carrier. Before the 1995

amendments, provisions in tariffs usually

governed whether shippers had actual,

constructive, or no notice; that’s what the

filed-rate doctrine meant. Landstar cites several

cases from the filed-rate-doctrine era. But with

that doctrine defunct for motor transport, it is

hard to envisage how a shipper can be said to

agree to a limitation of liability of which it

lacked actual knowledge.

 Let us suppose, however, that this is wrong,
and that shippers sometimes must snoop around to

see what a carrier’s files may contain. Had it

investigated, Tempel might have found the

disclaimer of liability. That disclaimer would

not have availed Landstar; motor carriers can’t

just cancel the Carmack Amendment by their sayso. Doubtless everyone would like to override

federal statutes on occasion, but matters are not

that simple. Subsection (c)(1)(A) of the Carmack

Amendment provides a means for carriers to limit

their liability, but it is not a means that

Landstar attempted to use. A motor carrier may

"establish rates for the transportation of

property (other than household goods described in

section 13102(10)(A)) under which the liability

of the carrier for such property is limited to a

value established by written or electronic

declaration of the shipper or by written

agreement between the carrier and shipper if that

value would be reasonable under the circumstances

surrounding the transportation." Carriers using

this approach may set out schedules of values and

prices, with higher charges for the

transportation of more valuable cargo. Our

opinion in Hughes discusses at length the process

of establishing valuation and value-specific

rates. 829 F.2d at 1416-23. What carriers may not

do is simply declare that they have no liability-

-for a value of $0 rarely will be "reasonable

under the circumstances surrounding the

transportation."

 Landstar says that Tempel was an experienced

shipper that could have consulted the tariffs;

yet Landstar, as an experienced carrier, should

have realized that its "tariff" was ineffectual

for transit under a through bill of lading.

Landstar had every right to issue a bill of

lading that stopped at the U.S. border. Instead

it entered into a competitive process, under

which Tempel had invited carriers to bid for

through transport of goods from Ohio to Mexico.

Having agreed to through transport in order to

obtain the business, and having failed to offer

Tempel a price schedule that linked rates to

liability for loss, Landstar must accept the

legal consequences under sec.14706.

Affirmed