Carriage performed by successive carriers. CMR Convention and Italian national law compared

The Convention relative au contrat de transport international de marchandises par route (CMR, signed in Geneva on 19 May 1956), in its Chapter VI regulates the factispecies in which transportation, even if governed by a single contract, is performed by successive road carriers. Since this is quite common in practice, both in the road transport sector and when involving several different transport modes, it would be very useful to standardize the regulations. This paper carries out a comparative analysis between the provisions of Articles 34-40 of the CMR and Article 1700 of the Italian Civil Code, the latter related to the so-called ‘trasporto cumulativo’, which equates to carriage performed by successive carriers. Both the CMR 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. The CMR states that Chapter VI applies only in the event that successive carriers are all road carriers: if carriage includes non-road routes, in the absence of a standard regulation, national rules on multimodal transport or the discipline on transport superposé should be applied. On the other hand, the Italian national legislation makes no such distinction, therefore Article 1700 of the Civil Code applies in cases of successive carriers that operate using modes of transport other than road transport. The different approach of the two regulatory systems leads to significant consequences in terms of the applicable discipline – especially with regard to the liability of carriers, the interruption of the prescription and the determination of delay – to cases of successive carriers who use different modes of transport to complete a single contract of international carriage. Finally, the paper, in order to give a more complete summary of all the issues involved, focuses on the distinction between the factispecies under analysis and those cases where the contracting carrier hires sub-contractors or acts as a freight forwarder for the completion of certain segments of the carriage.