Court Opinion

ID: 88250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2010-04-28 16:01:35+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:32.590693
License: Public Domain

77 U.S. 176 (1869)
10 Wall. 176
RAILROAD COMPANY
v.
REEVES.
Supreme Court of United States.

*182 Mr. P. Phillips, for the plaintiff in error.
*184 Messrs. Albert Pike and R.W. Johnson, contra.
*188 Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.
A preliminary point is raised by the defendant in error that the exception was not taken at the trial, but was taken afterwards on the overruling of a motion for a new trial.
It seems probable that the formal bill of exceptions was not signed or settled until after the motion was overruled, but it is a common practice, convenient in dispatch of business, to permit the party to claim and note an exception when the occasion arises, but defer reducing it to a formal instrument until the trial is over. We think the language of the bill implies that this was done in the present case, and that it is a reasonable inference from the language used at the beginning and end of this bill, that the exceptions were taken during the trial, as the rulings excepted to were made.
Comment is also made, that the exception does not point out to which instruction it is taken, nor to any special part *189 of the charge which was given. But the instructions prayed by defendant were not offered as a whole, but each one for itself, and the action of the court in refusing them, to which exception is taken, may be fairly held to mean each of them.
As to the charge given by the court, the language of the exception is more general than we could desire. And if the errors of this charge were less apparent, or if there was any reason to suppose they were inadvertent, and might have been corrected if specified by counsel at the time, we would have some difficulty in holding the exception to it sufficient. But the whole charge proceeds upon a theory of the law of common carriers, as it regards the effect of loss from the act of God, on the contract, so different from our views of the law on that subject, that it needs no special effort to draw attention to it, and it is so clearly and frankly stated as to have made it the turning-point of the case.
We are of opinion, then, that both the refusal to charge as requested and the charge actually given are properly before us for examination. As regards the first, we will only notice one of the rejected instructions, the fourth. It was prayed in these words:
"When the damage is shown to have resulted from the immediate act of God, such as a sudden and extraordinary flood, the carrier would be exempt from liability, unless the plaintiff shall prove that the defendant was guilty of some negligence in not providing for the safety of the goods. That he could do so must be proven by the plaintiff, or must appear in the facts of the case."
It is hard to see how the soundness of this proposition can be made clearer than by its bare statement. A common carrier assumes all risks except those caused by the act of God and the public enemy. One of the instances always mentioned by the elementary writers of loss by the act of God is the case of loss by flood and storm. Now, when it is shown that the damage resulted from this cause immediately, he is excused.
*190 What is to make him liable after this? No question of his negligence arises unless it is made by the other party. It is not necessary for him to prove that the cause was such as releases him, and then to prove affirmatively that he did not contribute to it. If, after he has excused himself by showing the presence of the overpowering cause, it is charged that his negligence contributed to the loss, the proof of this must come from those who assert or rely on it.
The testimony in the case, wholly uncontradicted, shows one of the most sudden, violent, and extraordinary floods ever known in that part of the country. The tobacco was being transported from Salisbury, North Carolina, to Memphis, on a contract through and by several railroad companies, of which defendant was one. At Chattanooga it was received by defendant, and fifteen miles out the train was arrested, blocked by a land slide and broken bridges, and returned to Chattanooga, when the water came over the track into the car and injured the tobacco.
The second instruction given by the court says that if, while the cars were so standing at Chattanooga, they were submerged by a freshet which no human care, skill, and prudence could have avoided, then the defendant would not be liable; but if the cars were brought within the influence of the freshet by the act of defendant, and if the defendant or his agent had not so acted the loss would not have occurred, then it was not the act of God, and defendant would be liable. The fifth instruction given also tells the jury that if the damage could have been prevented by any means within the power of the defendant or his agents, and such means were not resorted to, then the jury must find for plaintiff.
In contrast with the stringent ruling here stated, and as expressive of our view of the law on this point, we cite two decisions by courts of the first respectability in this country.
In Morrison v. Davis & Co.,[*] goods being transported on a canal were injured by the wrecking of the boat, caused by *191 an extraordinary flood. It was shown that a lame horse used by defendants delayed the boat, which would otherwise have passed the place where the accident occurred in time to avoid the injury. The court held that the proximate cause of the disaster was the flood, and the delay caused by the lame horse the remote cause, and that the maxim, causa proxima, non remota spectatur, applied as well to contracts of common carriers as to others. The court further held, that when carriers discover themselves in peril by inevitable accident, the law requires of them ordinary care, skill, and foresight, which it defines to be the common prudence which men of business and heads of families usually exhibit in matters that are interesting to them.
In Denny v. New York Central Railroad Co.,[*] the defendants were guilty of a negligent delay of six days in transporting wool from Suspension Bridge to Albany, and while in their depot at the latter place a few days after, it was submerged by a sudden and violent flood in the Hudson River. The court says that the flood was the proximate cause of the injury, and the delay in transportation the remote one; that the doctrine we have just stated governs the liabilities of common carriers as it does other occupations and pursuits, and it cites with approval the case of Morrison v. Davis & Co.
Of the soundness of this principle we are entirely convinced, and it is at variance with the general groundwork of the court's charge in this case.
As the case must go back for a new trial, there is another error which we must notice, as it might otherwise be repeated. It is the third instruction given by the court, to the effect that if defendant had contracted to start with the tobacco the evening before, and the jury believe if he had done so the train would have escaped injury, then the defendant was liable. Even if there had been such a contract, the failure to comply would have been only the remote cause of the loss.
*192 But all the testimony that was given is in the record, and we see nothing from which the jury could have inferred any such contract, or which tends to establish it, and for that reason no such instruction should have been given.
JUDGMENT REVERSED AND A NEW TRIAL ORDERED.
NOTES
[*]  20 Pennsylvania State, 171.
[*]  18 Gray, 481.