158 Jan Ramberg the investors themselves in spite of the well recognized principle to permit investors to limit their exposure to the amount invested in limited companies. This is well evidenced by the after-events of the oilspill caused by the supertanker Amoco Cadiz outside the coast of Bretagne, where the assets of the tanker owning company proved to be quite insufficient to satisfy the claims raised by the victims of the damage to the environment through the oil emerging fromthe tanker. Instead, the corporate veil was pierced in order to gain access to the capital of Standard Oil who owned the company which in turn owned the tanker. You may call this the doctrine of the deepest pocket if you like.'^ 3.2 Theprinciple ofconsistency andforeseeability as guidelinesfor legislation I will now turn to another phenomenon created by the factors mentioned. They tend to give rise to so-called “ad hoc legislation” and “anti-conceptualism”. Let us look at a fewexamples. In Sweden, the Sale of Goods Act from1905 was recently replaced by the new Sale of Goods Act of 1990. This represents a time span of 85 years while, in consumer law, the time span between the first Consumer Sales Act of 1973 and the new one of 1990 was only a little less than 20 years. Similar, rather frequent, changes have occurred in other pieces of legislation fromthe field of consumer law. Another example: the rules of interpretation for trade terms. Incoterms, have been revised 1936, 1953, 1967, 1976, 1980 and 1990 and this has been caused by changed transportation techniques, documentary practices and, last but not least, electronic data transmission (EDI).'^ Still another example: the well founded concern of the environment has given rise to what we may call “casualty-legislation” on the international level in the form of the Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Convention 1969 added by a particular Fund Convention 1971, to which the oil importing countries contribute in order to create a particular systemfor additional compensation of the victims of damage to the environment. Protocols have been added to these conventions in 1984 as a further means to increase the amounts available for compensation but nevertheless this has not been enough to satisfy the affected interests in the United States, particularly not when the casualty of the grounding of Exxon Valdez demonstrated what damage an oil spill could do to the environment (the compensation paid by the shipowner in this case exceeded 2 billion USD). The trend continues in the on-going project to develop a system with respect to liability for the carriage of hazardous and noxious In re Amoco Cadiz Oil Spill, 1984, AMC2123. Subsequently, the objective to get at a maximum of liable parties for such damage to the environment has been satisfied by particular legislation, the U.S. 1990 Oil Pollution Act. See J. Ramberg, op. cit. note 7.
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