Short answer. Possibly yes. If the common carrier negligently incurred delay in transporting your goods, the storm — a natural disaster — will not free the carrier from responsibility. The delay has to be negligent, not just any delay, but if it was, the natural-disaster defense does not apply.
What the law says
If the common carrier negligently incurs in delay in transporting the goods, a natural disaster shall not free such carrier from responsibility.
Civil Code, Article 1740 — Delay Defeats the Natural-Disaster Defense. Read the full provision →
Why a storm is not automatically a clean defense
Carriers often treat a natural disaster as an automatic escape from liability, on the theory that nobody controls the weather. This article narrows that assumption sharply where delay is in the picture: if the common carrier negligently incurs in delay in transporting the goods, a natural disaster shall not free such carrier from responsibility. The logic is straightforward — if your goods should already have reached their destination, or reached a place of safety, before the storm hit, and only remained exposed because the carrier was negligently behind schedule, the storm is not really the sole cause of your loss.
The delay itself has to be negligent
This article does not strip carriers of the natural-disaster defense for every delay — only for delay that was negligently incurred. A delay caused by something outside the carrier's control, or one the carrier could not reasonably have avoided, is a different situation from a delay caused by the carrier's own carelessness, poor planning, or failure to act with due diligence. Whether the specific delay in your shipment was negligent is the threshold question this article puts front and center.
What this means for your claim
If your goods were destroyed by a storm after a delay, the carrier's first move will likely be to point to the storm as a fortuitous event beyond their control. This article gives you a direct response to that: the storm defense does not survive if the delay that put your goods in the storm's path was itself the carrier's fault. The strength of your position turns on establishing that the delay was negligent — for example, that the carrier had no legitimate reason for being behind schedule when the storm struck.
This is a narrow, specific rule — not a general presumption
This article addresses one particular sequence: negligent delay followed by a natural disaster. It does not establish that carriers are always liable for storm damage, and it does not by itself prove that any given delay was negligent — that still has to be shown. If your situation involves this fact pattern, the delay's cause and the timeline between the delay and the storm are the details that will matter most in assessing whether this article applies to your case.