Hello.
I have a doubt regarding the use of preposition in the folowing sentence:
“The Conrtactor bears responsibility before the Customer for damage of cargo…”
Is “before” OK in this sentence?
You have a question or query regarding the use of the preposition.
A native English speaker would not use ‘doubt’ in that way.
No, ‘before’ does not appear to be correct there. What is the meaning and what is the rest of the sentence? The entire phrase seems to be skewed.
Hi, Bee.
It’s from a draf contract drawn by someone who -like me - is not an English native. I don’t like “before” either and I’m at a loss which prepostion to use.
Here is more context:
The Contractor sells and delivers some goods to the Customer. He is also responsible for choosing appropirate packing and should the goods be damaged during the transportation due to the fact that the Contractor used inappropriate packing it should be his responsibility, not the responsibility of the carrier or any other ogranisation that may be engaged in transportation.
What I tried to express is that it’s only the Customer (not any other party) who imposes this responsibility on the Contractor.
I think that “to” seems to be the right prepostion:
“The Contractor has a reposibility to the Customer for the possible damage of goods during the transportation due to inappropriate packing”.
What do you think of this sentense? Is “to” OK here?
Remove ‘the’ before ‘transportation’ and correct the typo, then that revised sentence would be an improvement on the original:
The Contractor has a responsibility to the Customer for the possible damage of goods during transportation due to inappropriate packing.
However, I really don’t see the need to express that it’s the customer imposing this responsibility. In fact, I would question whether it is actually the customer doing so. Who is drawing up the draft contract. The contractors or someone on their behalf? If so, then it seems to me that the contractors themselves are accepting the responsibility. Perhaps you are thinking of the company being liable to the customer, rather than the customer imposing terms on the company.
Here is my suggestion:
The Contractor is responsible for any damage to goods caused by inappropriate packing during transportation.
The Contractor is responsible for any damage to goods caused by inappropriate packing during transportation and shall be liable to provide the customer with a replacement item where available or a full refund if a replacement is not available, plus any additional costs incurred by the customer as a result of such damage.
It’s the Customer who is drawing up the contract. Then the two parites should agree on the wording. The contractor does not want to make many changes to the wording suggested by the customer in order not to drag out unnecessary talks.
Thank you for your help!
In that case, go with your revised sentence.