Court Opinion

ID: 9831379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:02:21.592118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:34.107506
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In the original opinion, after quoting from the decision' in Barrett v. Northern Pacific Co., 29 Idaho, 139, 157 Pac. 1016, this court said:
“The italics are our own, inserted to indicate our conclusion that the court in that case did not intend to hold, as appellant here apparently contends, that the road first receiving the goods, regardless of contract, would be liable for all damages thereafter sustained by the shipment en route upon its interstate journey. See Parker-Bell Lumber Co. v. Groat Northern Ry. Co., 69 Wash. 123, 124 Pac. 389, 41 L. R. A. (N. S.), 1064.”
In criticizing that declaration, appellant now makes it quite plain, not only that the use of the word “apparently” in the attempt to state "its contention with reference to the holding in the case there referred to did not do full justice to its actual position concerning the effect of that particular decision, but that its most earnest insistence is that both the Barrett Case, and a number of others it cites and relies upon, among them Ross v. Ry. Co., 112 Me. 63, 90 Atl. 711, and Aton Piano Co. v. Ry. Co., 152 Wis. 156, 139 N. W. 743, sustain its proposition that the I. & G. N. and not the H. E. & W. T. was the initial carrier in this instance.
While gladly so correcting the record as to make it accurately reflect appellant’s precise attitude, and therefore striking from the former opinion the word “apparently,” a careful reconsideration of the matter convinces us that its thus clarified and emphasized contention is erroneous, and that our first determination was correct.
The principle running through all the leading cases thus cited as authority for a contrary view, as we deduce it, is the same and fully supports this court’s conclusion. In the Barrett Case the court finds under the facts that two separate and distinct contracts of interstate carriage were entered into, the first one with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company for transportation from Connelsville, Mo., to Spokane, Wash.; the second with the Northern Pacific Railway Company for carriage on from Spokane, Wash., to Rupert, Idaho. The latter company alone was sued, and the only material question involved was whether damage shown to have been done to the shipment between Spokane and Rupert — not en route from Connelsville to Spokane, between which points no damage was shown to have occurred — was chargeable, under the Carmack Amendment, to the Northern Pacific Company, whether or not resulting from its own negligence or that of the other common carriers over whose lines it had routed the goods from Spokane to Rupert. In holding the Northern Pacific to be so bound, the Supreme Court of Idaho, after using the language quoted in our former opinion, rests its conclusion directly uiDon the ground that it was so liable because it had been the first carrier to contract to take the goods from one of those points to the other, and for that reason alone had become, as to that journey, the initial carrier within the meaning of the Carmack law. The court emphasizes this view in rejecting the contention that the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy could have been the initial carrier over the route involved — that only from Spokane on to Rupert — by observing that that road would have been the initial carrier as to any damage occurring between Connelsville and Spokane for the very same reason; that is, because it had been the first carrier to contract to transport the shipment from one of those particular interstate points to the other. There can be no comfort for appellant, therefore, in that case.
. The facts and the reasoning in the Ross Case are even more adverse. There three carloads of potatoes were shipped from different points out on an electric road, the Bangor Railway & Electric Company, through Bangor, Me., to Hoboken, N. J.; but there was a through tariff rate from these points of origin themselves to Hoboken, and the Maine Central Railroad Company, which received the cars at Bangor, and then by its own and connecting lines caused them to be transported on to Hoboken, advanced to the electric company its proportionate part of such through freight charges. This, despite the fact that the electric company had only billed the cars as far as Bangor, without knowledge on the part of its responsible shipping agents — so far as shown by the evidence — that their destination was beyond that point, the court found to constitute evidence of such a “common control, management, or arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment,” as to bring the electric company within the purview of the Carmack Amendment; in other words, to make it the initial carrier within the contemplation of that act, because it had done what in legal effect was held to amount to a contract to become such. Nor was that court either. *319the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, content to merely so hold without stressing that as its interpretation of the law under consideration ; for in further determining which of the carriers involved • was liable to the, shipper on a special contract made with him by the Maine Central at Bangor f.or heating the cars while en route to destination, in rejecting the suggestion that the electric Company was the initial obligor as to that undertaking also, and holding the railroad company alone responsible, said:
“The defendant was the first carrier to contract with the shipper with respect to heating ; and we think that, as to defaults in heating during the course of transportation, it it to be deemed the initial carrier. We may properly add that the point seems to be a novel one in eases involving a construction of the Carmack Amendment. Our attention has been called to no case, and we have found none, like this one. We base our conclusion upon what seems to us to be a reasonable construction of the statute.”
Surely, then, this case cannot correctly be said to support appellant’s position.
Likewise with the two just reviewed, in the Aton Piano Company Case, the appealing railway company, in the effort to escape liability as the initial carrier, contended that it acted merely in the capacity of a local express or drayman in delivering the pianos at Milwaukee to its connecting carrier for transportation into another state; but .the court, after observing that doubtless a contract of that nature might have been made, stated that the undisputed evidence showed, it had not been, and held the appellant subject to the provisions of the Carmack Amendment, although it -had only in fact carried the goods 15 miles, for the reason that it had first contracted to make the shipment an interstate one for the entire distance.
It is not deemed essential that further eases be discussed; as before stated, so far as we have had opportunity to determine, their reasoning not only does not Inveigh against, but supports, our own conclusion. Moreover, the particular facts here involved, it seems to us, very clearly class the simple service rendered in this instance by the I. & G. N. Company without the pale of the Carmack Amendment. From the agreed stipulation it affirmatively appeared that this car was merely switched by the I. & G. N. from its side track,.where the loading took place, to a point in its yards four miles distant, all within the city of Houston, and done strictly pursuant to the local requirements of the Texas Railroad Commission, and even that one day after the appellant company — without any showing that the I. & G. N. Company had any knowledge of that undertaking or of the destination of the shipment — had entered with the shipper into a written contract to transport the ear all the way from Houston to a destination in Massachusetts, in consideration of a through rate between those points.
To hold a road subject, under these conditions, to all the pains and ' penalties of this amended federal statute would, it seems to us, in practical effect at least, be to say that under no circumstances, -without becoming so bound, could it render any local or incidental service touching in any manner a shipment other carriers, with whom as to their undertaking it was in no wise in privity, intended for interstate transportation — a doctrine this court is unwilling to underwrite.
The motion is overruled.
Overruled.