Short answer. Only five. Article 1734 makes a common carrier answerable for lost, destroyed or damaged goods unless the loss was due to a natural disaster, an act of the public enemy in war, an act or omission of the shipper, the character of the goods or defective packing, or an order of competent public authority.
What the law says
Common carriers are responsible for the loss, destruction, or deterioration of the goods, unless the same is due to any of the following causes only
Civil Code, Article 1734 — The Five Exempting Causes for Common Carriers. Read the full provision →
A closed list, not a set of examples
The word doing the work is only. Article 1734 provides that common carriers are responsible for the loss, destruction, or deterioration of the goods, unless the same is due to any of the following causes only, and then names five. Because the list is exclusive, a loss that does not fall squarely within one of the five leaves the carrier liable. This flows from the extraordinary diligence a common carrier owes: it is not judged by whether it behaved reasonably, but by whether the cause of the loss is one the law has agreed to excuse.
The five causes
The excusing causes are a flood, storm, earthquake, lightning, or other natural disaster or calamity; an act of the public enemy in war, whether international or civil; an act or omission of the shipper or owner of the goods; the character of the goods or defects in the packing or in the containers; and an order or act of competent public authority. Each describes a cause outside the carrier's control or traceable to the shipper. Ordinary mishaps of transport — a road accident, theft in transit, a fire of unexplained origin, careless handling — appear nowhere on the list, and none of them excuses the carrier.
The shipper's fault and the goods themselves
Two of the five deserve a closer look because carriers reach for them most. A loss from the character of the goods or defects in the packing or in the containers excuses the carrier only where it had no hand in the defect and did not accept the cargo knowing of it. An act or omission of the shipper covers things like a wrong or incomplete declaration, or improper loading the shipper insisted on. In both, the carrier still has to prove the excusing fact; it cannot simply assert that the packing was poor and leave the shipper to disprove it.
Even a listed cause is not the end of it
Falling within one of the five is necessary but not always sufficient. The Code expects the carrier to have exercised due diligence to minimise the loss even when a natural disaster strikes, and where its own negligence combined with a listed cause to produce the damage, the excuse can fail. So the practical questions are two: was the immediate cause of the loss genuinely one of the five, and did the carrier do what it could once that cause appeared? Keep the bill of lading, photographs of the goods and packing, and any weather or authority records that fix what actually happened.