Unit 4: Aviation Liability/ Carriers’ Liability
4.1 The Liability Ladder — From Warsaw to Montreal
The Warsaw Convention 1929 (the unification’s first act — the carriage’s document, the ticket’s conditions, and the liability’s core): the presumed-fault liability with the low caps (the passenger’s death-or-injury limited to the 125,000-Poincare-francs era — roughly USD 10,000 at the gold-franc’s value: the inflation’s scandal of the later decades); the defences (the all-necessary-measures face; the contributory negligence); the cargo-and-baggage regimes; the documentation’s formalism (the ticket’s defects’ penalty: the unlimited liability for the missing particulars — the formal discipline’s teeth).
The Hague Protocol 1955 — the passenger’s cap doubled (the ~USD 20,000 face: the 250,000-francs’ revision) + the documentation’s softening (the simplified ticket) + the jurisdiction’s modest widening; the protocol world’s split (the Warsaw-and-Hague states’ two camps — the US’s dissatisfaction the engine of the next steps).
The Montreal Agreement 1966 — the US’s private-law coup: the CAB’s exit-threat answered by the carriers’ special contract (the USD 75,000 cap with the absolute liability‘s zone — the all-necessary-measures defence excluded below the cap; the US-routes’ application).
The Guatemala City Protocol 1971 — the attempted passenger-regime rebuild (the absolute liability + the insurance-based ceilings’ design) — never in force (the ratification’s failure; the attempt’s importance: the template for 1999).
The Montreal Protocols of 1975 — the SDR’s introduction (the gold’s burial — the liability’s modern money) + Protocol No. 4’s cargo regime (the cargo’s absolute liability with the SDR/kg caps — the all-cargo modernisation).
The IATA-and-ATA Inter-Carrier Agreements (1995–1997) — the private law’s rescue: the carriers’ voluntary waiver of the Warsaw caps (the unlimited-liability-plus-rebuttable-presumption regime) — the private ordering’s bridge to the convention’s reform.
The Rome Convention 1952 (the third party’s surface damage — the foreign aircraft’s crash liability
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