BOOK REVIEW

Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road

Chiara Tincani

Springer Nature Switzerland, 2022

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In its Law for Professionals series, Springer has recently published Chiara Tincani’s Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road. Chiara Tincani is professor at the Department of Law of the University of Verona in Italy. Her book is an academic piece of work on the 1956 Geneva Convention on the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR – Convention relative au Contrat de transport international de Marchandises par Route). Since the origin of the CMR, the main books published in English are from the hand of authoritative common law academics. Professor Tincani’s work, although written in English, is to be situated rather in the line of the leading authors on CMR in the continental law tradition. The author departs from a huge body of court cases, systematically listed in an impressive table of cases, from continental jurisdictions including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and others. At the same time, English cases are extensively being referred to, prompting for a comparison between the application of the CMR by courts on the continent on the one hand and common law courts on the other. Moreover, each chapter is followed by an extensive list of notes, articles and books on the subject matter covered.

Amongst others, all traditional points of discussion in the CMR are treated upon with reference to case law and scholarly writings: combined transport under Article 2, the causes of exemption of Article 17, breaking limitation under Article 29, the liability regime of successive carriers under Articles 34 and following, the scope of the mandatory nature of the Convention pursuant to Article 41. Furthermore, the author also addresses questions arising in this modern day and age, which had never been envisaged by the draftsmen of the CMR, such as transport by driverless vehicles, platooning, electronic documents, modern means of communication and cargo tracing & tracking. In the chapter on jurisdiction special attention is given to the regulations of the European Union dealing with applicable law and jurisdiction and the Lugano Convention inasmuch as dealings with Switzerland are concerned.

In ten chapters this book proposes an up-to-date reading of the CMR, reviewing the Convention’s structure and considering the trends in the case law of most EU countries and England. Recommended reading!

Peter Laurijssen FICS

Antwerp