A very recent appeal judgement has confirmed the principle according to which theft excludes liability only when it is absolutely unpredictable and inevitable and if the loss occurs through violence or threat.
As for gross negligence, the Court has stated that it must be excluded ‒ and therefore the limitation of liability is applicable ‒ if the precautions taken correspond to normal diligence measures and are therefore not liable to censure.
In this case, the theft of the goods occurred when the vehicle was parked with other vehicles, closed with a padlock, during a short brake the driver had taken to have something to eat.
Although he was employed by one of the litigants, the driver’s deposition as witness enabled the Court to verify the actual way in which the theft of the goods occurred and, therefore, to exclude that the carrier could be sentenced to compensate their full value, deeming fair a compensation limited to the value resulting by multiplying € 1,00 by each kilo of transported goods, as this was a national transport and therefore the Italian Civil Code had to be applied.
The judgment is particularly interesting since it requires an average diligence from the carrier, which fits well with the standard methods by which the transports actually happen, without requiring for the application of the limitation of liability what seems essentially a probatio diabolica.
(Trieste Office – Massimo Campailla and Federica Fantuzzi – 0039(0)407600281)
