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PART II - VISBY RULES 519Article 4 (5) - Limits of liabilityCommittee on Bills of Lading Clauses - Verbatim ReportsNo. 7 - 12 June 1963 A.M.Le Président (J. Van Ryn): . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[2]Nous pouvons alors revenir en arrière et examiner les deux questions que nousavions laissées en suspens.La première est celle de savoir s’il est possible de trouver [3-10] une formule quiremplacerait dans l’art. 4 (5) les mots “colis et unité”. Nous avions chargé un groupede travail d’examiner cette question. J’ai été informé ce matin qu’après de longséchanges de vues, le groupe de travail est arrivé à la conclusion qu’il était préférablede demander à la commission d’approuver purement et simplement les conclusionssur ce point de la commission internationale, cette conclusion étant qu’il y a lieu demaintenir le statu quo en ce qui concerne l’expression “colis et unité”. Telle est doncla conclusion de la recherche, des échanges de vues du groupe de travail.Dans ces conditions, je mets directement aux voix à moins que quelqu’un ne demandela parole.La parole est à M. M. Hill de la délégation britannique.[11]Mr. Martin Hill (United Kingdom). Mr. Chairman, as Chairman of the little WorkingParty that has met this morning, I have been asked to make a short statement.The International Sub-Committee studied this problem for something like threeyears and came to the conclusion, as said in the Report, that it is best to leave it as it isand not to try and define “unit” any more closely.We had a very interesting discussion on it for three quarters of an hours and the resultof that discussion is, as you have just stated, Mr. Chairman, that we recommendthat the Sub-Committee’s decision be adopted.We realise that there is risk of lack of uniformity through different interpretationsin the different courts and, of course, in the United States the Hague Rules Act is differenton this point, so that there is inevitably a difference there. On the other hand, Ithink it is right to say that the view of certainly the majority of the Sub-Committee thismorning was against introducing the conception of freight unit which, as I said the daybefore yesterday in discussing this subject does lead one to quite inconsistent and undesirableconsequences. If for instance you take the simple example of a motor car,which undoubtedly is a unit, if it is packed in a case it would be limited to 10.000 Poincaréfrancs and there would be no argument about it. If you then say the unit shouldbe related to the basis of freight calculation, that basis, to the best of my knowledge,varies quite considerably in different liner trades and you could have cases and, in fact,you have had a case in the United States when on the basis of freight unit it would rankfor purposes of limit as nine units so that if it is packed in a case the limit would be oneof 10.000 francs [12-20] and if it is unpacked the carrier would pay 90.000 francs.One cannot really have that. It would be creating a far worse disease than any existingdisease by going away from a conception of unit, whatever it might be, to a definiteconception of freight unit.The general trend, and I put it rather carefully in that way, the general trend I thinkof our discussion this morning was that a package is a package and you only move awayfrom the package to the unit, when you are definitely not dealing with a package, thenthe line of thought and it was only a line of thought and we are not attempting to expressany opinion was that a unit is a single article - one unit, one single article - andthe only problem you then come up against is that arising in the case of bulk cargo; our