Court Opinion

ID: 9811594
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:25:15.559164+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:18:46.328753
License: Public Domain

Claek, J.,
dissenting as to measure of damages. The contract provides for an exemption from liability for fail-*589Tire of tbe plaintiff to ship if “prevented by strikes or other canses beyond the control” of the plaintiff. The Judge charged, in substance, that if the plaintiff had contracts with the defendant and others of. like purport covering the same period of time, and there was no contract with the defendant that such contracts should not be made with others, then, if there was a failure to ship to the defendant the quantity required, the plaintiff would be liable only to the extent that it was not prevented from shipping by. such strikes or other causes beyond its control, i. e., that the defendant iñ such case could only claim loss on its pro rata part of what the plaintiff was permitted by the “strike or other causes beyond its control,” to mine and ship. This instruction was eminently fair and just. The defendant knew that the plaintiff was not running its mine solely to fill the defendant’s contract, and that the plaintiff had insisted on protecting itself by a provision in the contract for exemption from liability for failure to ship when caused by “strikes or other causes beyond its control.” If the defendant wished to get the coal anyhow, if mined, it should have stipulated that its contract should be filled regardless of the plaintiff’s contract obligation to others. It is quite certain that the plaintiff would not have made such contract with the defendant.
Suppose, for argument’s sake, the plaintiff was prevented “by strikes or other causes beyond its control” from shipping one-half the quantity stipulated by its several contracts, then clearly its duty to each of its contractees was to ship them one-half the quantity contracted for. The failure to ship any one such half would not be caused by “tbe strike or other causes beyond the plaintiff’s control,” but by the plaintiff’s own volition in preferring other contractees, and the plaintiff would be liable to each for its shortage in not shipping the one-half, which upon a pro rata it could have shipped.
*590If the plaintiff should have shipped the full quantity to the defendant and is liable for the difference, then the plaintiff should have shipped the full quantity to every other one of its contractees and is liable for failure to do so, and the provision in its contracts for exemption from liability for any failure to ship, “caused by strikes or other causes beyond its control,” would be a nullity, and the plaintiff would be liable just as if that important provision had been left out. No one, or more, contractees can be selected to bear the total failure to ship. If so, why should it not be the defendant, who in that event would recover nothing?
Knowing that the mine owners were not shipping exclusively to itself the defendant, by agreeing to the usual clause of exemption from liability for failure to ship caused by “strikes or other causes beyond the shipper’s control,” must have understood that it had no right to complain if the plaintiff abated the contract quantity pro rata according to the quantity it was prevented from shipping by such strikes-or other causes beyond its control. This is the ruling always made as to shipments by common carriers, which is justified upon the above reason, arising out of the contract as well as upon public policy which forbids discrimination by quasi public corporations. This is not the case of an unqualified agreement to ship a certain quantity of coal, but there is an agreement for an exemption if prevented by certain causes, and the defendant should bear its pro rata part of the failure to ship caused by the happening of such stipulated contingency.
No precedent either way has been presented to us, but this is a reasonable and just construction of the clause in the contract, which otherwise is nugatory as a protection to the shipper for whose benefit it was inserted. It happens, it would seem, that this Court is the first to construe such contract, and there is every reason we should make a just and proper construction.