Evaluation of the rules on successive carriage (2). Carriage performed by successive carriers. CMR Convention and Italian national law compared

The Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (known as C.M.R., signed in Geneva on 19th May 1956), in its Chapter VI regulates the factispecies when the transport of goods, even if governed by a single contract, is performed by successive road carriers. Since this is quite a common in practice, both in the road transport sector and in one involving different transport modes, it would be very useful to standardize the regulations. This article makes a comparative-contrastive analysis between the provisions of articles 34 - 40 of the C.M.R. and art. 1700 of the Italian Civil Code, the latter related to the so called “trasporto cumulativo”, which can be understood as carriage performed by successive carriers. Both C.M.R. and Italian Civil Code provisions have much in common and seem to provide a substantially similar discipline to the factispecies. Nevertheless, they diverge significantly on an essential point concerning successive means of transport. While C.M.R. states that Chapter VI applies only in the event that successive carriers are all road carriers, providing that in the absence of standard regulation, when the carriage includes non-road routes, national rules on multimodal transport or the discipline of trasport superposé (“mode on mode – one means of transport is carried out on another”) should apply; the Italian national legislation, on the contrary, makes no such distinction. Art. 1700 of the Italian Civil Code applies in cases of successive carriers that operate using modes of transport other than road transport. The different approach taken by the two regulatory systems leads to significant consequences in terms of the applicable discipline – especially in regards to the liability of carriers the interruption of the prescription and the determination of the delay – to cases of successive carriers who use different modes of transport to complete a single contract of international carriage. Finally, in order to give a more complete framework of all the issues involved, special focus will be given to the distinction between the factispecies in analysis and those cases where the contracting carrier hires subcontractors or acts as a freight forwarder for the completion of certain segments of the carriage.