Den dokumentvillkorade garantin

Sammanfattning: Documentary guarantees, in practice usually described as independent guarantees, are characterized by the fact that they essentially contain only conditions referring to whether or not certain specified documents are presented to the guarantor. A documentary guarantee is usually only one part of a contractual structure involving several contracts and parties. Such contracts give rise to special legal questions. The dissertation addresses a number of such questions from a Swedish perspective, by describing the contents of legal norms and their application on different types of cases. Particular emphasis is placed on applying a language which allows this to be done in a non-contradictory and accurate manner. A question of central importance is how guarantees can be classified in a way which facilitates answering questions of the kind mentioned above. Such a classification, based on the contents of guarantees, clarifies what distinguishes the documentary guarantee from other types of guarantees. When it comes to the legal relation between the parties to a contract which obliges one party, the debtor, to arrange for the issuance of a documentary guarantee towards the other party, the questions in focus in the dissertation is in particular under what conditions the other party is free to demand payment under the guarantee and under what conditions the debtor has a right to repayment from the other party. In respect of the legal relation between the guarantor and the beneficiary, the main questions considered in the dissertation are how it is determined whether or not a guarantee is to be interpreted as a documentary guarantee, how documentary conditions in documentary guarantees are interpreted, and to what extent there are special legal norms applicable to documentary guarantees. A further question concerns the application of the mandatory rule providing that the beneficiary does not have a right to performance from the guarantor if the beneficiary’s demand is fraudulent. When it comes to the legal relationship between the parties to a mandate relating to the issuance of a documentary guarantee, the conditions under which the service provider has a right to indemnification is of particular importance. A question of general importance is, further, how legal norms can be designed in order not to give service providers in mandates relating to documentary guarantees incentives to investigate circumstances which are difficult to assess.