Court Opinion

ID: 9298744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:05:18.827429+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:35.912147
License: Public Domain

MILLER, Circuit Justice.
I cannot give this request as drawn. There is evidence here which it ignores. It was evidently framed with the purpose of shutting out from the consideration of the case certain evidence introduced by the plaintiff. The credibility of that testimony is not for us to pass on. It is for the jury. The jury must be instructed upon the law as it stands on the whole of the evidence. The testimony which I refer to as not taken account of in the request is, that of the plaintiff tending to show that when the payment was made as for extra baggage, the defendant’s agents knew that the carpet sack contained gold dust, and knowing that fact, charged for it only the rates usual for extra baggage.
I agree with the defendant’s counsel that if Cahn introduced the gold into the coach secretly at Salt Lake, and attempted to get it carried for nothing, he was guilty of a gross fraud. If that were the whole of the case, he could not recover here. In this view of the case, it may upon the authorities be doubtful even whether it is incumbent to bring home to Cahn notice that the carrier would not be liable for gold thus carried. In that view the case would, without any evidence, show an intentional concealment in order to escape payment for a service rendered to the passenger by the carrier. That would be a fraud; and the law would not aid the party practising it. It would be a fraud by which the passenger, without payment, would secure an advantage, and if he could recover for a loss, it would be a great advantage. It' would be forcing a contract on a carrier which he did not make.
The case of Orange County Bank v. Brown, 9 Wend. 116, is precisely in point. A travel-ler on a steamboat on the Hudson river took $11,250 to be carried "for the plaintiff. He placed it in his trunk, which, with its contents, was lost on board. The plaintiff sought to recover the money as lost baggage. Mr. Justice Kelson, in an able opinion, held that this amount of money was too large to come under the head of “baggage,” and that an attempt to have it carried free of reward under the cover of baggage was an imposition upon the carrier, and that he was deprived of his just compensation, and subjected to unknown risks by such devices.
But that case and the many others in which it has been followed, is distinguishable from this in the particulars which I have mentioned. Here there is evidence tending to show that the carrier knew that the baggage contained the gold. If he did, he was not deceived. Cahn may have intended to deceive and defraud him. If he did, he failed to do so. If the carrier knew that the carpet sack contained the gold, and took not the usual rates chargeable for gold, but only such as were chargeable for ordinary extra baggage, then he was not defrauded. The Orange County Bank Case proceeds throughout on a state of facts which, as the plaintiffs claim, differs from that shown here. Whether they are right, we must leave it to the jury to say. This instruction does not do so, and we cannot give it as requested.
The other matters referred to in the request are properly submitted to the jury. I will give the request modified according to the views I have expressed.
The jury returned a verdict for half of the sum claimed, thus dividing the loss between the parties. ‘