the travaux préparatoires hague rules hague-visby rules - Comite ...

PART II - VISBY RULES 569Article 4 (5) - Limits of liabilityThis gave to the shipper of the valuable goods an option; either he could declarethe value and pay the higher rate of freight appropriate to it, or he could refrain fromdeclaring the value, in which case he would recover from the shipowner only the maximumof £ 100 per package. That gave him the commercial choice of deciding whetherhis cargo underwriter would charge him more in extra premium that the extra freighthe would have to pay to the shipowner for accepting liability for the higher value declared.In 1924, there were only the traditional methods of shipping cargo. It was thereforepossible to agree, as was found at the conference in Brussels which produced thatConvention, upon a figure which would represent the turning point between the exceptionallyvaluable cargo and the ordinary average run of cargo which the shipownerwould expect. That figure was fixed then at £ 100 sterling.There has been a considerable change in the value of money since. Traditionalmethods of stowing and shipping will continue, and therefore they must continue tobe provided for. The alteration which you will find in paragraph 5 (i) in relation to thetraditional methods of shipping is the increase of the £ 100 of the 1924 Convention tothe figure of 10,000 Poincaré francs which, it was the view of the Commission, representeda fair figure for the average cargo packed in the ordinary way.So that old method for the traditional shipment of cargo continues under the newclause, only with the increase in the amount per traditional package from £ 100 tofrancs gold 10,000.What the old Hague Rules did not deal with was the big unit. That might be eithera big machine, like a locomotive, or a large machine, or it might be now the big package- what we have called the container, pallet or other article of transport used to consolidategoods. So far as the big machine was concerned, there was no difficulty aboutthat under the old rules because one could always declare the higher value if one wasprepared to pay the higher rate of freight. But when one comes to the big package thenthere are other difficulties which arise. The figure of 10,000 francs is an appropriatefigure for the ordinary kind of package. The average weight of a traditional, packageor crate or bale is about 100 kilograms. But that sum of money is quite inappropriatefor containers already in use, which may contain up to 30 or 40 metric tons of goods.[117]Obviously if a package, of that size, the container, is going to be considered as apackage or unit for liability, a figure of 10,000 francs is inappropriate. It was becauseof the problem of the big container, which is itself a package, that it became necessary,it was thought at our Conference in May, that some provision should be made to dealwith the big package, the package which today may run to 30 or 40 tons, and within afew years may be much larger than that. The problem was how to deal with that kindof big package.The view that was expressed was that one should deal with that by putting a maximumliability on it, depending upon the weight of the cargo which it contained. Thatis putting upon it a figure which would represent a reasonable average value per kiloof weight. This is the same principle by which the Commission arrived at a figure forthe reasonable ordinary value of the tradition sized package. The figure of francs 30per kilogram was the figure arrived at in the Commission as a result of a general consensusthat this would meet the requirements of the cargo of ordinary value packed inthe large container.Those are the two matters which are dealt with in paragraph (i). That means thatfor any package, and for this purpose (I will come to the container clause in a moment)the container may be a package, there will be a maximum liability, if the weight doesnot exceed 333 kilos, of francs 10,000. Above that weight, which is what francs 10,000