The four main Conventions on transport of goods saw the light in the days of the “gold standard” and therefore the limitations of the carriers’ liability were expressed in “gold values”, believed in as the most reliable. In fact, only one year after the birth of the CIM Convention, the economic world was shaken by the first of a long series of crises that led to the abandonment of the “gold standard”.

The purpose of this article is to study the consequences that such monetary changes had over the limits of liability expressed in the four Conventions on carriage of goods, that is the Hague Rules, the Warsaw Convention, the CMR and the CIM. More specifically, I will deal with this topic under the profile of Italian law, by reviewing the above limits as they changed and as they would be applied by Italian courts nowadays.

A similar study has been done, under English Law, by Miss L. Bristow, and was published in this journal in February, 1978 ([1978] 1 LMCLQ 31). That article is of outstanding quality, completeness and clarity, and also covers perfectly the historical review of the monetary changes. Therefore, I will refrain from going into the details of the said monetary events, but will simply make reference to Miss Bristow’s article. A lot more has been written on whether the Bretton Woods system remained in force, or was legal, after the Smithsonian Agreement of 1971, the oil crisis of 1973 and the introduction of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) system.

This topic, naturally, involves recoveries, whenever the limitation question is of vital importance. The point is: do gold values have to be converted into national (Italian) currency by applying the Bretton Woods parity ($35 per ounce) or by applying the market price of gold (which is floating, but has now rocketed to over $200 per ounce)? The Governmental and inter-Governmental attitude has been that of switching to a system based on SDRs, which was achieved by means of Protocols and Enactments as far as CMR and CIM are concerned. The position of the CIM limit is now final, and expressed in SDRs.

The Warsaw Convention and Hague Rules limits are soon to be reviewed likewise, as the Montreal Protocols are in the process of implementation in Italy, and the Hamburg Rules will become, within the near future a reality that cannot be ignored. The four Conventions on carriage of goods are, at present, in a transitory stage, whose importance, nevertheless, cannot be denied or superficially underestimated. As we will more clearly see below, the Warsaw Convention limit has received a good deal of judicial attention, while the Hague Rules’ limit had hardly any attention worth mentioning.

As we anticipated, National and Supranational Authorities have been particularly sensitive to the problem of the “gold value” conversion with reference to CIM (and CIV as well). It is known how the Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer introduced a unity of account (named Franc UIC) whose value was calculated by reference to the