The Court:

Given that on 26 July 1917 at the station of Bordeaux-Bastide the Compagnie Paris-Orléans received from Vairon & Co. a package containing metal bits for delivery, against cash, to the Usines Vermot at the station of Belfort-Douane, that the contents of the package were lost en route and that Usines Vermot, having paid the full freight to the final carrier, the Compagnie des chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, then sued it for the sum of 16,685.70 francs, that being the alleged value of the goods lost plus various other sums such as insurance premiums;

Given that damages of only 475 francs were awarded by the judgment under attack on the basis that that was the value of the goods as stated in the transit documents handed to the original carrier by the consignors and used by it for customs purposes, the Court inferring from this that the original carrier could not foresee that more was at risk in the contract of carriage than the value so declared, and holding, quite correctly, that the Compagnie Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée, the final carrier, acting as substituted agent for the Compagnie Paris-Orléans, had just as much right as the latter to invoke the limitation of liability laid down in article 1150, cited above, since in demanding the full freight at the place of delivery the final carrier is exercising the rights of prior carriers and if, as a consequence, he is responsible for loss and damage occurring in the course of transit he can, by the same token, rely on all defences open to them;

Given that the applicant next contends that damages must always be in relation to the true rather than the supposed value of the property lost and that if the cause of loss was foreseeable the debtor who fails to perform his obligation, even in good faith, must pay for the whole damage even if its extent could not be foreseen;

But given that the article says nothing about the foreseeability of the cause of the damage and that far from making the good faith debtor liable in an amount of damages which exceeds what he could have foreseen, it states explicitly that, in the absence of deliberate breach, the debtor is liable only for the damage foreseeable at the time of the contract

…

For these reasons DISMISSES the application for review.

Subsequent Developments

This note on subsequent developments reflects the legal situation as of October 2004.

Civ 7 July 1924: the transporter of goods, sued for their loss during transport, can limit his liability to their valuation, if it is not due to his dol that the obligation has not been carried out. Article 1150, which does not make any allusion to expectation about the cause of the harm, cannot be interpreted as allowing the imposition on the debtor in good faith of damages exceeding his expectations. Case law maintained.

A judgment of the Cour de cassation (Com, 15 December 1992, Bull no 420) has repeated this solution in terms which are almost identical, stating that "the debtor under an obligation is only obliged to pay damages which have been foreseen or could be foreseen at the time of the contract if it is not through his dol that the obligation has not been carried out", but that "in the case of serious fault (faute lourde) by the transporter, he must, in application of Article 1150 of the Code civil, make reparation for all the harm suffered by his customer, without being able to refer him to the sum contained in the declaration of value".

Translation by Mr Raymond Youngs

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