Seaver v. Bradley

60 N.E. 795, 179 Mass. 329, 1901 Mass. LEXIS 570

• Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
• Decided: June 18, 1901
• Status: Published

Opinion

Holmes, C. J.

Those who maintain a passenger elevator in an office building are not “ common carriers of passengers ” within the meaning of Pub. Sts. c. 73, § 6. We assume that that section is not prevented from applying because it represents a statute passed before such elevators were in familiar use. But the words do not describe the owners of an elevator. The modern liability of common carriers of goods is a resultant of the two long accepted doctrines that bailees were answerable for the loss of goods in their charge, although happening without their fault, unless it was due to the public enemy, and that those exercising a common calling were bound to exercise it on demand and to show skill in their calling. Both doctrines have disappeared, although they have left' this hybrid descendant. The law of common carriers of passengers, so far as peculiar to them, is a brother of the half blood. It also goes back to the old principles concerning common callings. Carriers not exercising a common calling as such are not common carriers whatever their liabilities may be. But the defendant did not exercise the common calling of a carrier, as sufficiently appears from the fact that he might have shut the elevator door in the plaintiff’s face and arbitrarily have refused to carry him without incurring any liability to him. Apart from that consideration, manifestly it would be contrary to the ordinary usages of English speech to describe by such words the maintaining of an elevator as an inducement to tenants to occupy rooms which the defendant wished to let.

The only question before us is the meaning of words. Therefore decisions that the liability of people in the defendant’s position is not less than that of railroad companies do not go far enough to make out the plaintiff’s ease.

Exceptions overruled.