Pearce v. Wabash Railroad

89 Mo. App. 437, 1901 Mo. App. LEXIS 177
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMay 7, 1901
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 89 Mo. App. 437 (Pearce v. Wabash Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pearce v. Wabash Railroad, 89 Mo. App. 437, 1901 Mo. App. LEXIS 177 (Mo. Ct. App. 1901).

Opinions

BLAND, P. J.

Briefly stated, the facts are, respondent shipped in bond via the Canadian Pacific Eailway Company and its connecting steamship line, four boxes of curios from Yokohama, Japan, consigned to Wilfred Schade & Co., destination port of St. Louis, Missouri, and prepaid the freight charges for the entire route. Erom Yokohama the goods were carried by steamship to Vancouver, British Columbia, and there delivered to the Canadian Pacific Eailway Company and were by it placed in a bonded car, duly sealed. Eor its own convenience, without the knowledge or consent of the plaintiff or the consignee, the Canadian Pacific Eailway Company changed the bonded destination of the goods to the port of St. Paul, Minnesota, and it and its connecting line, the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault St. Marie Eailway Company carried the goods to St. Paul and delivered them to the United States customhouse at that point. The United State customs offi[441]*441cials at the port of St. Paul received the goods, opened the packages, examined them and appraised their contents and assessed the import duties and charges on the goods at $264.31. The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault St. Marie Railway Company paid the customs dues so assessed, took the goods from the customhouse as repacked by the customhouse officials and billed them to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company to be by it forwarded to Given, Iowa, where the latter company connects with the appellant railway company. The $264.31 import dues were incorporated in the waybill furnished the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company by the Minneapolis, etc., Railway Company as advance charges. These charges, the Chicago, etc., Railway Company paid to the Minneapolis, etc., Railway Company. The Chicago, etc., Railway Company carried the goods to Given, Iowa, and there delivered them to the appellant railway company to be carried to their destination, St. Louis, Missouri, and furnished it a waybill showing the payment by the Chicago, etc., Railway Company of the $264.31 as advance charges, which the appellant agreed to pay and afterwards did pay.

The appellant carried the goods to St. Louis in the same condition they were in when it received them, and offered to deliver them to the respondent on the payment by him of the advance charges of $264.31. Respondent discovered that the packages had been opened after' their shipment from Yokohama, and refused to pay the charges unless he was given opportunity to open the packages and inspect the goods to ascertain their condition. The appellant refused to permit the inspection in advance of the payment of charges, and respondent replevied the goods and took them into his possession. On opening the packages he discovered that goods of the value of $350 had been abstracted and that others had been damaged. Item thirteen of the agreed statement of facts is as follows: [442]*442“That when said Wabash Railway Company, defendant herein, received said goods from the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, as hereinbefore stated, said Wabash Railway Company, defendant herein, became responsible under its traffic arrangements for the payment of said sum of $264.31 to the said Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, and did not at the time know that said charges were other than the usual and ordinary freight charges upon said goods advanced by each carrier of the same from the point of shipment to the place of delivery.” And the first clause of the fourteenth item reads as follows: “That the Wabash Railway Company, defendant herein, transported said goods in' the month of June, 1895, in due time and in good order from said Given, in the State of Iowa, over its line of railway to the city of St. Louis.” The evidence tends to prove that the loss of some of the goods and the damage to others were occasioned through the fault or negligence of the customhouse officials at St. Paul, and there is no evidence whatever that any of such damage is attributable to the wrong or negligence of the appellant ; on the contrary, it is admitted that the goods arrived at St. Louis in the same condition in which they were when received by the defendant at Given, Iowa. The original contract of shipment expressly provides that each carrier in the line, beginning at Vancouver and ending at St. Louis, “shall be liable only for whatever negligent act was committed by it upon its own line and no other.” In this state of the case the defendant is not liable for the loss or for damages to the goods (Nines v. Railroad Co., 107 Mo. 475) and respondent can not offset his damages against the advanced charges paid by appellant.

Respondent bases his right to the goods on the assumption that the entry of the goods at the customhouse at St. Paul was not only unnecessary, but was in violation of the contract of [443]*443shipment and prejudicial to him; that the payment of the customs dues at St. Paul was not necessary or incidental to their transportation. A carrier may pay to a connecting- carrier' charges that the latter has paid and retain possession of the goods for its reimbursement, where the advance charges were such as were incident to the transportation of the goods and were necessary to be paid in order to continue them in transit; such as freight and warehouse charges and for the discharge of matured and valid liens on the goods, created by law or by the owner for the non-payment of which the transit of the goods has been stopped or their possession withheld from the carrier. Steamboat Virginia v. Craft, 25 Mo. 76; Richardson v. Risk, 104 Mass. 156; Redfield on Carriers, 282; Hutchinson on Carriers. But the payment of the lien in order to continue the transportation is not obligatory on the carrier and, if made without the consent of the owner, is at its risk. The United States has a specific statutory lien upon the importation for the payment of import duties, and one which had to be discharged before the goods could be lawfully delivered to the respondent or to the consignee. The value of this lien could only be ascertained by inspection and appraisement by the authorized officials of some customhouse at a port of entry. U. S. R. S. 1878, (2 Ed.), section 3097, requires a carrier having imported goods in charge, arriving on the north or northwestern frontier, to report them to the collector in charge of the port of entry in the district in which the goods shall first arrive, accompanied with manifest and entries, and it is made the duty of the collector of such ports to exercise and discharge the same duties as if the importation had been made by sea, but this section has no application to imports brought into the United States' in bond. It is admitted, in the agreed statement of facts, and shown by the testimony, that the goods were shipped in bond from Yokohama, and the evidence is that the four [444]*444boxes were carefully packed, strapped and sealed, and marked “shipped in bond,” and that a customs clearance in quadruplicate, signed and sworn to, was indorsed or signed by John McLean, consul general at Kanagawa (which is Yokohama), showing the entrance of the goods was to be made at the port of St. Louis. Under this state of facts it was clear that the goods were entitled to direct importation to the port of St. Louis, as provided by U. S. R. S. 1818, (2 Ed.), sec. 3102, and, as all the railroads that carried the goods were bonded roads there was no occasion for their diversion to the port of St. Paul.

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Bluebook (online)
89 Mo. App. 437, 1901 Mo. App. LEXIS 177, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pearce-v-wabash-railroad-moctapp-1901.