Court Opinion

ID: 9831660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 21:16:19.541579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:36.816189
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellants, in their motion for rehearing, announce that:
“The common law, as recognized by our courts, is the same as recognized by all the courts of our country, and in reason there should not be a different application of the common law upon this subject in interstate shipments from that of intrastate shipments.”
The difference is, in intrastate shipments, that any limitation of common-law liability, or of the common carrier’s duty, by any special agreement between the carrier and shipper, is declared void by special statute. If it were the duty of the Carrier at common law to exercise ordinary care to drench the hogs during transportation, then the statute, as Justice Stayton expresses it in the Tra-wick Case, cited in the main opinion, “deprives such carrier of the right to limit its liability by contract, even as 'to matters which it might legally contract under common law. The common-law duties and liabilities, and not those duties and liabilities as they may be affected by contracts lawfully under the common law, are the duties and liabilities of common carriers under the statutes of this state, and they cannot be restricted or limited by any contract or agreement whátever, in cases to which the statute is applicable.” Except the statute providing for special contracts between the shipper and the carrier, permitting the transition of duty to the shipper to feed and water live stock, there is no other statute which would permit by contract, in intrastate shipments, an assumption of the burden to care for such live stock during the period of transportation in any other manner. Surely the external application of water to this character of live stock to prevent overheating would be, under certain conditions, a common-law duty. If sp, such a duty cannot be contracted away, though such a con*1102tract may have been lawful under the common law, unless article 741 would permit a special contract between the parties for that purpose, which is clearly not. broad enough in its scope.
The motion for rehearing is, in all things, overruled.