Air cargo claims have been handled under the international legal regime since the early 1930s when the Warsaw Convention was adopted. This liability regime later developed into a more modern instrument, i.e. the Montreal Convention 1999, which allegedly sets an unbreakable limit for cargo damage. Although such cargo liability limit under the Montreal Convention has been upheld by courts in many jurisdictions, efforts made by plaintiff lawyers to circumvent it have never ceased. In China, a Beijing Intermediate Court decided in an air cargo damage case that the airlines should not be entitled to the limit protection under the Montreal Convention and must indemnify the actual losses suffered by the plaintiff in accordance with the PRC Civil Aviation Law. This has been criticized by many practitioners for violating the intention of the drafters of the convention. The aim of this article is to look into the true meaning of the related provisions of the Montreal Convention by examining not only the convention itself, but also the judicial practices of other countries, and explore possible methods to clarify the legislative intent so as to avoid judicial uncertainty.
Air and Space Law