The plaintiff had made a special declaration in an amount which exceeded the Art. 22 limit but was only for a fraction of the diamonds’ actual value. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant’s conduct (which was not described, or in issue, at this stage) came within Art. 25. The court considered as a preliminary issue whether the plaintiff, having made a special declaration, could recover a greater sum than the declared amount (assuming his interest in the cargo was worth more), in circumstances where the Warsaw-Hague limits were set aside under Art. 25. In other words, was the amount specified in the special declaration a modified Convention limit or a value not open to contrary evidence from the declarant or appropriate claimant? The judge held that the amount specified in the special declaration was a limit of liability which could be displaced in the same circumstances as other Convention limits.

The argument revolved around the interpretation of the Convention. The main matter considered here is whether the court correctly identified and applied the relevant rules of interpretation. The thrust of the views expressed by the majority in the House of Lords in Fothergill v. Monarch Airlines 4 was that, when a treaty comes to be interpreted as English law, attention should be paid to the international law rules for interpreting treaties. This might seem unremarkable inasmuch as a treaty is an instrument established under a system of international law. To the extent that English law does not provide to the contrary, international law can therefore be viewed as the “proper law” of the instrument, to borrow a term from private international law.