Short answer. No. The Civil Code is clear: if the common carrier negligently incurs in delay in transporting the goods, a natural disaster shall not free such carrier from responsibility. A storm that destroys already-overdue goods does not relieve the carrier — the prior negligent delay breaks the natural disaster defense.
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 →
The natural disaster defense and its limits
Philippine law generally allows a common carrier to escape liability when goods are lost or damaged due to a natural disaster — storms, floods, earthquakes, and similar events that are outside human control and that even extraordinary care could not prevent. This is one of the recognized exemptions to the carrier's liability. But Article 1740 limits that exemption: negligent delay forfeits it. If the carrier was already late — through its own fault — when the disaster struck, the defense falls away. The sequence matters: negligent delay first, then the disaster.
Why delay nullifies the exemption
The logic of Article 1740 is straightforward. A natural disaster is an unforeseeable event that the carrier cannot be held responsible for — but only if the carrier had no prior fault in exposing the goods to that risk. A carrier that delivers goods on time can claim the disaster was unavoidable. A carrier that was already negligently behind schedule cannot: if the goods had been delivered when they should have been, they would not have been aboard or in storage when the storm hit. The negligent delay, not the storm, is the effective proximate cause of the loss.
What "negligently incurs in delay" means
Not every delay is negligent delay. A carrier that is held up by circumstances beyond its control — port closures, other natural events that delayed departure, or customer instructions — is not necessarily negligent. The delay that defeats the natural disaster defense is one that the carrier caused through its own fault: poor planning, equipment failures it failed to maintain, overbooking, or simply failing to depart and transport within a reasonable time without justification. If the carrier was late for reasons outside its control, the interaction between delay and natural disaster becomes more nuanced and fact-specific.
Building your claim
To succeed on this argument, you need evidence of two things: that the carrier was behind schedule through its own negligence, and that the goods were in the carrier's custody when the natural disaster struck. Gather the contract of carriage with the agreed delivery timeline, the actual delivery or departure records, any communications from the carrier about delays, and any documentation of the storm and its timing. The carrier will likely argue either that the delay was not negligent or that the disaster would have struck regardless. Having a clear timeline is essential to counter those arguments.