These are three suits instituted to recover from the defendant steam-boat company for goods which the plaintiff delivered on the company’s whаrf at Baltimore, on December 21, 1877, to be transported by it, and which were burned on the wharf by a fire during that night. It is admitted that the fire was not occasioned by any wаnt of care"on the part of the company, and that after the fire broke out all possible effort was made to extinguish it and save the goods. By аgreement the cases have been tried before the court without a jury. The steam-boat company had, at the time the goods were recеived by it, a daily line of steamers from Baltimore to West Point on the York river, and these goods were to be transported by that line, and thence by railroаd to Bichmond and other more southern points. The steamers sailed daily at 4 p. m., and it was known that goods received after 3 p. m. were not usually sent by that day’s steamer. In fact, goods were received by the company during all the business hours of the day, and bills of lading given; none of them, however, specifying that the goods wore to be forwarded by any particular vessel; and whenever goods were received during the day, which for any reason could not go by that dаy’s boat, they were sent forward the next day.
Evidence has been submitted by the plaintiffs tending to prove that the goods were delivered at the compаny’s wharf before 3 o’clock, and in time to have gone by that day’s boat; but the evidence was not entirely convincing, and in the face of the positivе testimony of the agent of the steam-boat company, that at 3 o’clock of that day there were no goods for the south remaining on the wharf, I am not prepared to find as a fact that the goods were delivered in time for that day’s boat. I do not, however, consider the finding of this fact of any imрortance, for, as I understand the law, even if the company could have forwarded the goods by that day’s boat and negligently omitted to do so, it would not affect its liability in these suits. The law is settled that in cases of this kind, unless the delay in forwarding the goods is so unreasonable in its nature as to be equivalent to a deviation, or unless the loss of the goods is the direct and proximate result of the delay, the carrier is not liable unless he would be answerable under his liability аs carrier without reference to the delay. And where goods in the custody of a carrier are destroyed by storms, floods, or fire, in a place in whiсh they would not have been but for the negligent delay of the carrier, the courts hold that the direct and proximate cause of the injury is the flood or the fire, and that the delay in transportation is only the remote cause. The supreme court of the United States so decided in Railroad Co. v. Reeves,
The important question in these cases, therefore, is whether, by thp language of the bills of lading, the steam-boat company has exempted itself from its common-law liability for the loss of the goods by fire while on its wharf; for if, by the bills of lading, it is exempt for the loss by fire, it makes no difference, in my judgment, that the company was to blame for the detention; and if, by the bills of lading, it has not exempted itself, it is liable notwithstanding it was not to blame for the detention. The right of common carriers, by proper stipulations in a bill of lading, to limit their common-law liability for losses by fire, when the fire is not attributable to their misconduct, or that of any persons or agencies employed by them, is well settled, (York Co. v. Central R. R.
It is contended on behalf of the plaintiffs that under the strict rules of construction applicable to stipulations by which the carrier seeks to limit his common-law liability the word “fire” in these bills of lading, and more particularly in the onе first mentioned, being classed with dangers of the seas and other risks of navigation, it is to be taken as applicable only to fire after the goods arе laden on board. ' After careful consideration I find myself unable to assent to this construction. The liability of the .carrier as carrier begins from the moment of the receiving the goods, (Hutch. Carr. § 89,) and-although preparatory to the transportation they are detained by him on his wharf or in his storehouse his responsibility then is in no respect different from his responsibility after the actual transportation has commenced. It is difficult, therefore, to see why, if he stipulаtes gen
I have not failod to consider the argument urged on behalf of the plaintiffs, based on the inconvеnience and .hardship occasioned by such an exemption as now upheld, arising from the fact that after the goods are delivered to the сarrier tho usual fire insurance which covers the goods while in the warehouse of the shipper is at an end, and that the ordinary marine policy does not attach until the goods are laden on board, and that as the shipper does not know whether the carrier has detained the goods on the wharf or has put them on board, he is at loss how to protect himself. This is, however, but one of the hardships resulting from the exemptions which carriers have been allowed to contract for. The lawfulness of such an exemption as that claimed in these present cases is too firmly settled by authoritative cases to he now doubted, and the difficulty is not to be cured by the court’s refusing to give to the words of the contract their fair and reasonable meaning.
Verdict for defendant.