21 Tex. 148 | Tex. | 1858
This was a bailment in which the defendant, the bailee, was to perform the service of carrying and paying over the money to the person for whom it was intended without receiving any compensation for his trouble and care. His services were wholly gratuitous. They were not officiously proffered by him, but were sought by the plaintiff for his own exclusive benefit. It was that species of bailment which is called in the civil law mandatum, and by Sir William Jones and Mr. Justice Story, in treating of the Common Law upon that subject, a mandate. And as respects the diligence which the mandatary is required to use respecting the thing committed to his charge, the doctrine of the Common Law universally applied, is that he is bound only to slight diligence, and is responsible only for gross neglect. (Story on Bailments, Sec. 174.) Judge Story, in his Commentaries on the Law of Bailments, refers to many authorities and cites many instances of the application of the rule, which show that it is the doctrine of the Common Law universally applied to mandates, both in the English and American Courts. Thus in Shiells v. Blackburne, (1 H. Black. 158,) where a merchant had undertaken gratuitously, but not officiously, to enter certain goods of the plantiff’s at the custom-house with his own goods of the like kind; and by mistake he entered them by the wrong name, so that all the goods were seized and lost, both the plain
Reversed and remanded.