29 Ind. 360 | Ind. | 1868
This cause was submitted to the court below upon the following agreed statement of facts: The appellee purchased a ticket issued by appellant, as evidence of a right of passage from Indianapolis to Shelbyville, and his baggage was taken charge of by said company for delivery at that
It was held in Orange County Bank v. Brown et al., 9 Wend. 85, that “ a common carrier who carries passengers and their baggage is responsible for the baggage, if lost, •although no distinct price be paid for its transportation. The compensation for its conveyance, in contemplation of law, is included in the fare of the passenger.” The law, as thus stated, was recognized in Camden &c. Transportation Co. v. Belknap, 21 Wend. 353. In Jordan v. The Fall River Railroad Co., 5 Cush. 69, this language is used: “ It was held, in the time of Lord Holt, and formerly by the Supreme Court of New York, that passenger-carriers were not liable for baggage unless a particular and distinct price had been paid for its conveyance. But it is now well settled, and is a matter of great and general convenience and accommodation in this age of universal and perpetual traveling, that passenger-carriers are responsible for the baggage of a passenger, and that the reward for conveying the baggage is included in the passenger’s fare.”
The ruling in the cases of Cole v. Goodwin et al., 19 Wend. 251, and Gould et al. v. Hill et al., 2 Hill 623, was that “ common carriers cannot limit their liability, or evade the consequences of a breach of their legal duties as such, by an express agreement, or special acceptance of the goods to be transported.”
Many of the earlier and most carefully considered cases in' England have treated notices given by common carriers limiting their common law liability, as having no application to a loss of goods resulting from the ordinary risks of transportation, but as intended to relieve the carrier from
Without deciding that the carrier may thus limit his liability, we hold that the limitation cannot, in any case, apply to a loss resulting from his own want of care. As the law imposes the general liability upon him, he could only avail himself of an exemption from such responsibility by proof that the loss occurred from some cause within the exception. Davidson v. Graham, supra, and the cases we have cited, following. In Moore v. Evans, 14 Barb. 524, it was held that the onus was upon the owner of the goods to prove want of care in the carrier, but the ruling is certainly against authority, and is we think an unreasonable departure from the-rule at common law, by which the carrier was required to show affirmatively that the loss resulted from inevitable accident or the public enemy. In this case, the evidence did not bring the appellant within any such exception.
But there is another ground upon which the judgment
The judgment is affirmed, with five per cent, damages and costs.