Menzell v. Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co.

17 F. Cas. 23, 1 Dill. 531

• Court: U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Iowa
• Decided: October 15, 1870
• Status: Published

Opinion

DILLON, Circuit Judge.

The motion for a new trial must be overruled. In the view I take of the case it is not necessary to consider whether the plaintiff succeeded by the fair weight of the testimony in establishing that the special contract was obtained from him by fraud. Nor is it necessary to consider whether the alleged want of any specific consideration therefor renders it. inoperative, nor whether the special finding that the fire happened through the fault of the company, is so manifestly unsupported by evidence as to make it the duty of the court to set it aside.

On the admitted facts of the case, conceding the validity of the special contract on which the defendant rests, and that it is binding upon the plaintiff, and that the fire was purely accidental, it is still my opinion, as it was on the.trial, that the plaintiff is entitled to recover.

.By the common law a public carrier is liable to the owner of the goods, though they are without fault, on the part of the carrier, destroyed by fire while in the course of transportation. The contract between the plaintiff and the defendant is admitted in the answer to be to carry the goods from Oshkosh to Mar-shalltown; and the goods were burned at Chicago, an intermediate station, and while the defendant sustained towards the plaintiff the relation of a common carrier. Hence, the defendant is prima facie liable to the plaintiff for the value of his goods destroyed by the fire, but to avoid such liability the company sets up and relies upon the above-mentioned special contract, signed by the plaintiff.

The strict responsibility to which the common law holds public carriers is, in my judgment, founded upon a soured and enlightened public policy, and is salutary in its operation; and although it is admitted that it is competent for the shipper and the company, in the absence of prohibitory legislation, to make a special contract, limiting, to a reasonable extent, the common¹ law liability of the latter, yet the courts'construe these contracts somewhat strictly; at all events, give to them no greater operation than the words used plainly show that the parties must have intended they should have. Therefore, if the plaintiff, for a consideration, had knowingly entered into a contract with the company, specifically releasing it from all liability for loss of the goods by accidental fire, without fault on its part, while in transit, such a contract, it is conceded, would be binding upon the plaintiff. But did the plaintiff in this case make any such contract? This involves a construction of the special contract set up by the company. The language is, “I hereby release said company from any and all damage that may occur to said goods, arising from leakage or decay, chafing or breakage, or (and this is the language relied on) from any other cause not the result of collision of trains, or of cars being thrown from the track while in transit”

Construing this general and indefinite language conformably to the rules adopted by courts in the interpretation of contracts of this kind, it is my opinion that it does nut plainly or satisfactorily appear therefrom that the parties intended thereby to exempt the company from liability for a total loss or destruction of the goods by fire while in the warehouse of the company at an intermediate station on the line of transportation; and therefore this agreement (admitting that it was knowingly entered into by the plaintiff, and founded upon a sufficient consideration) does not relieve the company from liability for the loss of the goods by fire, even though the fire were accidental, and without fault ■on the part of the company, its agents, or servants.

Judgment on the verdict.