Court Opinion

ID: 1087742
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2013-10-30 02:33:47.929139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:27:22.327993
License: Public Domain

166 U.S. 375 (1897)
THE MAJESTIC.[1]
No. 168.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued January 20, 21, 1897.
Decided March 29, 1897.
CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT.
*381 Mr. Frederick W. Whitridge and Mr. Willard Parker Butler for libellants.
Mr. Everett P. Wheeler for steamship company.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.
By the contract in this case, the steamship company agreed, to land libellants with their luggage at the port of New York, and none of the alleged exceptions or conditions were referred to therein. They were notices and nothing more, and it cannot be held as matter of law, that, whether they were regulations for the conduct of business or limitations upon common law obligations, they constituted any part of the contract.
Such is the rule in England, where this contract between the ship owner, a British corporation, and citizens of the United States, was entered into.
In Richardson, Spence & Co. et al. v. Rowntree, (1894) App. Cas. 217, the respondent had paid passage money for a voyage *382 on appellants' steamer, and had received a ticket folded up so that no writing was visible unless she opened it, but on which were the words: "It is mutually agreed for the consideration aforesaid that this ticket is issued and accepted upon the following conditions." One of the conditions was: "The company is not under any circumstances liable to an amount exceeding 100 dollars for loss of or injury to the passenger or his luggage." Respondent having brought an action against appellants to recover damages exceeding one hundred dollars for personal injuries, certain questions were left to the jury, in response to which they found that she knew there was writing or printing on the ticket, but did not know that the writing or printing contained conditions relating to the terms of the contract of carriage, and that appellants did not do what was reasonably sufficient to give her notice of the conditions; and returned a verdict in her favor for one hundred pounds. The House of Lords affirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeal that there was evidence upon which the jury could properly find as they did, and that judgment was properly entered for plaintiff upon the findings.
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Herschell, said: "Now, those are questions which the majority of the Court of Appeal, in the case of Parker v. South Eastern Railway Company, pointed out, by their judgment, ought to be left to the jury. That was a case, in its broad features, very similar to this, inasmuch as the plaintiff there had deposited some luggage at the luggage office of one of the railway companies, and received in return for the deposit of the luggage a ticket on which there was printed `See back,' and on the back were certain conditions by which it was sought to limit the liability of the company. The majority of the Court of Appeal held that they could not say, as matter of law, that by reason of taking that ticket in exchange for the goods the plaintiff was bound by the conditions; that there were questions to be determined by the jury, and that upon their determination would depend the liability of the defendants.
"My Lords, the only question that now comes before this *383 House is whether there was any evidence to go to the jury upon which they could properly find the answer that they did to the last two questions. Now, what are the facts, and the only facts, bearing upon this question which were proved before the jury? That the plaintiff paid the money for her passage for the voyage in question, and that she received this ticket handed to her folded up by the ticket clerk, so that no writing was visible unless she opened and read it. There are no facts beyond those. Nothing was said to draw her attention to the fact that this ticket contained any conditions; and the argument of the appellants is, and must be, this, that where there are no facts beyond those which I have stated the defendants are entitled, as a matter of law, to say that the plaintiff is bound by those conditions. That, my Lords, seems to me to be absolutely in the teeth of the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of Parker v. South Eastern Railway Company, with which I entirely agree; nor does it seem to me consistent with the case of Henderson v. Stevenson in your Lordships' House when that case is carefully considered." Parker v. South Eastern Railway Company, 2 C.P.D. 416; 1 C.P.D. 618; Henderson v. Stevenson, L.R. 2 H.L. Sc. 470.
In Henderson v. Stevenson, a ticket having on its face only the words "Dublin to Whitehaven," was given by a steam packet company to a passenger, who without looking at it, paid for it, and went on board their steamer. The ship was wrecked, the passenger lost all his luggage, and brought an action against the company. The defence was that on the back of the ticket these words were printed: "This ticket is issued on the condition that the company incur no liability whatever in respect of loss, injury or delay to the passenger, or to his (or her) luggage, whether arising from the act, neglect or default of the company or their servants, or otherwise." Judgment was given against the company and affirmed by the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns, said, among other things: "It seems to me that it would be extremely dangerous, not merely with regard to contracts of this description, but with regard to all contracts, if it were to *384 be held that a document complete upon the face of it can be exhibited as between two contracting parties, and, without any knowledge of anything beside, from the mere circumstance that upon the back of that document there is something else printed which has not actually been brought to and has not come to the notice of one of the contracting parties, that contracting party is to be held to have assented to that which he has not seen, of which he knows nothing, and which is not in any way ostensibly connected with that which is printed or written upon the face of the contract presented to him. I am glad to find that there is no authority for such a proposition in any of the cases that have been cited." It was held that a mere notice from the steam packet company, without the passenger's assent, would not discharge it from performing its duty to carry safely and securely unless prevented by unavoidable accident.
The rule is not otherwise in this country, and is stated in Wheeler on the Modern Law of Carriers, 263, thus: "A notice or memorandum, even though printed upon the bill of lading or other contract of the carrier, unless referred to in the body of the contract and thus made a part of it, is no more than a notice, and does not form a part of the contract between the shipper and the carrier."
In Michigan Central Railroad v. Mineral Springs Manufacturing Co., 16 Wall. 318, it was held that although a common carrier might limit his common law liability by special contract, assented to by the consignor of goods, an unsigned notice printed on the back of a receipt did not amount to such contract, though the receipt with such notice on it might have been taken by the consignor without dissent. And New Jersey Steam Navigation Company v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. 344, was cited to the point that nothing short of an express stipulation by parol or in writing should be permitted to discharge the carrier from duties which the law has annexed to his employment.
In New York Central & Hudson River Railroad v. Fraloff, 100 U.S. 24, 27, this court said: "It is undoubtedly competent for carriers of passengers, by specific regulations, distinctly *385 brought to the knowledge of the passenger, which are reasonable in their character and not inconsistent with any statute or their duties to the public, to protect themselves against liability, as insurers, for baggage exceeding a fixed amount in value, except upon additional compensation, proportioned to the risk."
In Malone v. Boston & Worcester Railroad, 12 Gray, 388, it was ruled that there was no presumption of law that a passenger on a railroad has read a notice limiting the liability of the railroad corporation for baggage, printed upon the back of a check delivered him, having on the face the words "Look on the back," and that the question of notice was properly submitted to the jury as a question of fact. And see Brown v. Eastern Railroad, 11 Cush. 97; Merchants' Despatch Transportation Co. v. Theilbar, 86 Illinois, 71; Rawson v. Pennsylvania Railroad, 48 N.Y. 212; Wilson v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, 21 Grattan, 654.
On the evidence, we are unable to conclude that the libellants should be held bound, as matter of fact, by any of the alleged conditions or limitations. They were not included in the contract proper, in terms or by reference.
The contract was signed in writing on behalf of the steamship company, but the notices were not. Libellants did not sign, nor were they required to do so, nor was it contemplated that they should.
The ticket was sent to the office of the father of two of the libellants and was forwarded or handed to one of them in an envelope. It was not seen by her until taken up in the middle of the ocean, nor by either of the others at all. The attention of neither of them was called to the notices, nor in any way to the ticket, nor had either of them read it, or read any of the printed matter, in fine type, by which the contract for passage was surrounded. The father of the two young ladies had directed passage to be engaged, and it is true that he had been in the habit of using such tickets himself in crossing, but there was no evidence that his attention had ever been particularly called to them; he had never read them; and he had no idea that the limitations contended for had ever been claimed to have been imposed thereby.
*386 We quite agree with Lord O'Hagan in Henderson v. Stevenson, that "when a company desires to impose special and most stringent terms upon its customers, in exoneration of its own liability, there is nothing unreasonable in requiring that those terms shall be distinctly declared and deliberately accepted."
But while we hold that libellants were not subjected to these alleged conditions and limitations, and that, therefore, the Court of Appeals erred in its conclusion that each of them was limited in recovery to £10, a limitation which we must say does not strike us as exactly reasonable in view of the "twenty cubical feet" of luggage for each, which the company had expressly contracted to carry, the question still remains, on the doctrine of implied exceptions, whether the injury here was by the act of God, for which the company was not liable. The burden in this respect is on the carrier. Clark v. Barnwell, 12 How. 272; Transportation Company v. Downer, 11 Wall. 129; The Edwin I. Morrison, 153 U.S. 199; The Caledonia, 157 U.S. 124.
The act of God, said Chancellor Kent (vol. 2, p. 597), means "inevitable accident, without the intervention of man and public enemies"; and again (vol. 3, p. 216), that "perils of the sea denote natural accidents peculiar to that element, which do not happen by the intervention of man, nor are to be prevented by human prudence. A casus fortuitus was defined in the civil law to be, quod damno fatali contingit, cuivis diligentissimo possit contingere. It is a loss happening in spite of all human effort and sagacity." The words "perils of the sea" may, indeed, have grown to have a broader signification than "the act of God," but that is unimportant here.
Judge Shipman in the Court of Appeals quotes from 1 Parsons on Shipping, 255, the definition there given of the "act of God," and the reason for it, as follows: "The `act of God' is limited, as we conceive, to causes in which no man has any agency whatever; because it was intended never to raise, in the case of the common carrier, the dangerous and difficult question whether he actually had any agency in causing the loss; for, if this were possible, he should be held."
We think it quite clear that the damage complained of cannot *387 be held to have been the result of such inevitable accident. The evidence was wholly unsatisfactory as to any inspection of the porthole before the vessel left Liverpool. What the chief officer says in that regard, in answer to leading questions, is manifestly not of his own personal knowledge, but on the assumption that such inspection had taken place, because it should have, which could have been established, yet was not, by calling the person whose duty it was to make it. Whether the ports were properly closed when the vessel sailed was not made out, nor was any such inspection of the compartment, after she sailed, proven, as, if the ports were not properly closed, would have detected the fact. The two or three feet of water in the mail room, Orlop No. 3, was perhaps not more than might have been taken in during the first four or five days of the voyage, if the port were not securely fastened and partially open. As remarked by the District Judge, whether the covers to all of the ports in the mail room, where this baggage was placed, were screwed down tight, or whether some of them were left open for light or any other purpose, was not affirmatively shown. The theory of the defence was that the breaking of the port was caused by floating wreckage, and while that might possibly have been so, there was no evidence directly tending to establish it as a fact. If it had been shown that when the vessel sailed the ports were in proper condition and properly closed, and that this was their condition on the day before the accident was discovered, that would have presented a different question. The captain testified that the iron dummy was turned back in a way which could not have been done by the sea, but he admitted that his memory was treacherous, after the lapse of time; and the log stated that the port was broken "either by the sea or by wreckage," while the chief officer, who was on the bridge, as the captain was not, said that, between six and eight that morning, he saw only one large piece of wreckage, which was "a good sized piece of timber"; "on the port side; away from the ship."
And, as Judge Brown held, if the wreckage referred to was of a kind adequate to force open an iron cover properly constructed and firmly screwed down over the port, then it devolved *388 upon the company to show why the ship did not steer away from the wreckage or slacken speed while passing through it; and this was not attempted. In our opinion the steamship company failed to show that the accident was one which could not have been prevented by human effort, sagacity and care, and we perceive no reasonable ground for disagreeing with the judgment of the District Court upon the facts.
The order of the Circuit Court of Appeals is reversed, and the decree of the District Court affirmed, with costs.
NOTES
[1]  The docket title of this case is Oceanic Steam Navigation Company, Claimant &c. Appellant v. Grace Howard Potter et al.