## Facts

- Faber, a German subject resident and trading in Colombia, conducted commerce (including coffee and hides) that relied on river traffic through Venezuela via the Zulia River system and related ports.
- The Zulia and Catatumbo rivers at issue lay wholly within Venezuelan territory, and Venezuela exercised governmental control over access to those waterways and ports.
- By executive decree of 11 September 1900, and by later decrees in 1901–1903, Venezuela suspended vessel and boat traffic and closed (or effectively closed) river commerce and associated port access in the Zulia region.
- Germany espoused Faber’s claim against Venezuela before the German–Venezuelan Mixed Claims Commission created by the January 1903 protocol, which provided for decision by commissioners and, in case of disagreement, an umpire.
- Venezuela contended the measures were taken in response to internal disturbance and pressing public-security conditions, and were not aimed at Germany or German nationals as such.
- Germany argued that shutting down the route for commerce to reach market injured foreign interests and, in substance, amounted to hostile conduct calling for reparation.
- The record included consular certificates and other ex parte official papers offered to prove losses and surrounding conditions, raising questions about admissibility and weight.
- The national commissioners differed, and the dispute proceeded to the umpire (Duffield) for the controlling award.

## Issues

1. Whether Venezuela incurred international responsibility to compensate a German national for commercial losses caused by decrees suspending river commerce and closing access along the Zulia River system.
2. Whether Venezuela’s sovereign authority over rivers wholly within its territory, together with emergency conditions amounting to necessity, precluded wrongfulness and barred compensation for the resulting losses.
3. Whether consular certificates and similar ex parte official documents were receivable in evidence before the Mixed Claims Commission, and how they should be treated in assessing proof of loss and causation.

## Decision

- The umpire received consular certificates and comparable official writings as admissible evidence, holding that the Commission was not confined by strict technical rules of proof used in domestic courts.
- On the merits, the umpire treated Venezuela’s suspension of river commerce and related closures as measures taken under sovereign authority in a situation of serious public emergency, and rejected a broad theory that the closure alone created compensable international wrong.
- As a result, items of damage that depended on establishing Venezuela’s liability for the Zulia closure—such as consequential business losses from prolonged storage, idle capital, interruption of communications, and continuing overhead—were disallowed on the reasoning stated in Faber (and applied by cross-reference in related Commission decisions).
- Recovery, if any, was confined to claim elements proven with sufficient specificity and not resting on the rejected liability theory tied to the general closure of the river route.

## Legal Principles

- A state has primary authority to regulate or suspend river commerce on waterways wholly within its territory; international responsibility does not follow automatically from economic harm to foreigners.
- Necessity or grave emergency conditions may preclude wrongfulness for otherwise injurious public measures taken to protect essential public interests, limiting or defeating claims for compensation based on the measures’ ordinary commercial effects.
- In mixed-commission practice, strict domestic evidentiary rules do not control; consular certificates and other official papers may be received, with reliability affecting weight rather than admissibility.
- Consequential commercial losses are not recoverable absent a showing of an internationally wrongful act attributable to the respondent state and a sufficient causal link between that act and the specific losses claimed.
- Where a claim’s major heads of damage turn on a single foundational liability question (here, responsibility for the Zulia closure), failure on that foundational point requires denial of dependent items.

## Conclusion

Faber (Germany v. Venezuela) held that the Commission could accept consular certificates without applying rigid domestic proof rules, but it rejected the claim’s central contention that Venezuela’s closure of the Zulia river route—taken under sovereign authority amid emergency conditions—made Venezuela broadly liable for the ensuing commercial disruptions; most consequential loss items tied to the closure were therefore denied, with any allowance limited to losses proven independently of that rejected theory.


Faber (Germany v. Venezuela), 10 R.I.A.A. 438 (1903)