Carter v. Reardon-Smith Line
| Citation | 129 A. 839,148 Md. 545 |
| Decision Date | 11 June 1925 |
| Docket Number | 43. |
| Parties | CARTER ET AL. v. REARDON-SMITH LINE, LIMITED, ET AL. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Maryland |
Appeal from Superior Court of Baltimore City; George A. Solter Judge.
"To be offically reported."
Action by Harold E. Carter, Herwald Ramsbothan, and Victor C Ponsonby, copartners trading as Carters of London, England and another against the Reardon-Smith Line, Limited, and others. From an order sustaining the motion of defendant named to quash the writ of summons plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.
Argued before BOND, C.J., and PATTISON, ADKINS, OFFUTT, PARKE, and WALSH, JJ.
John B. Deming, of Baltimore (Keech, Deming & Carman, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellants.
Robert W. Williams and James Carey, 3d, both of Baltimore (Janney, Ober, Slingluff & Williams, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellees.
The Reardon-Smith Line, Limited, Inc., a corporation under the laws of Great Britain, has for a number of years been engaged in the business of transporting freight for hire on ocean going vessels from ports on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States to ports in other countries. Its freight service appears to have been divided into two classes, one a "berth" or "general cargo" business, and the other a "tramp" or "full cargo service." In the general cargo business, a certain regularity and uniformity as to the time and place of service is maintained, while in the "full cargo" or "tramp" service there is no such uniformity or regularity, but the vessels are chartered under a single charter party and whether they arrive at or depart from a given port depends upon no regular schedule or sailing list, but upon the needs and convenience of the charterer. In connection with its business as an ocean carrier, the Reardon-Smith Line, Limited, Inc., hereinafter referred to as the Reardon-Smith Line owned and operated a number of freight carrying ships some of which were allocated to the general cargo business and others to the full cargo or "tramp" service. In the course of its general cargo business, it attempted to establish freight carrying lines between different ports in the United States and ports in Great Britain and Germany, carrying accumulated cargoes and operating on a definite schedule, and in connection with that general purpose, on or about December, 1922, it established an ocean carrying freight line between Baltimore and London, Liverpool, and Hamburg. It was as we have said a British corporation, and it transacted its business in this country by agents, who appear to have been W. G. Liley of New York, its resident director and American representative and the United States Navigation Company.
When the line from Baltimore was established, the United States Navigation Company, hereinafter called the Navigation Company, claiming to be the general agent of the Smith-Reardon Line for its general cargo or berth service in this country, entered into a contract with Maurice B. Carlin, a ship broker of Baltimore, whereby Carlin was appointed the agent of the Smith-Reardon Line for its Baltimore general cargo service from December 11, 1922, to January 1, 1924, and at the same time he was selected by Mr. Liley as the agent for such of the company's "full cargo" steamers as came to Baltimore.
The "general cargo" or berth service from Baltimore was discontinued in 1923, and Carlin's employment as the company's agent at Baltimore for matters connected with that service, was, the company contends, canceled as of December 31, 1923.
On or about March 22, 1923, while the relation of principal and agent still existed between Carlin and the company, Edward M. Langley & Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, shipped 150 barrels of rye whisky on a "uniform through bill of lading over the lines of the Smith-Reardon Line, and the B. & O. R. R. Co. from Lynchburg, Ohio, to Cecil William Plumb at London. Several copartners, trading as "Carters," bankers of London, financed the purchase, and as security took an assignment of the bill of lading. The shipment was delivered to the City of Quebec, one of the Smith-Reardon Line's vessels by the Canton Railroad Company, a connecting carrier, and ultimately delivered in London where it was found to be 35 barrels short.
"Carters" thereupon demanded that the carriers make good that shortage, and upon their refusal this suit was instituted against the two railroad companies and the Smith-Reardon Line. The action was begun on January 24, 1924, and on March 20, 1924, the Smith-Reardon Line was summoned by service on Maurice B. Carlin, as its agent. The Smith-Reardon Line moved to quash the writ of summons on the ground that, when it was served, Carlin was no longer its agent, and the court, after hearing testimony upon that question, sustained the motion, and quashed the writ, and from that order this appeal was taken.
The record contains eight exceptions, of which seven relate to rulings on questions of evidence, and one to the order quashing the writ of summons.
The first exception deals with the action of the court in admitting in evidence the contract between Carlin and the United States Navigation Company, under which Carlin was employed as the appellee's agent, and the second to its action in allowing the appellee to offer in evidence a letter dated November 26, 1923, canceling that employment as of December 31, 1923. John W. Praesent, secretary of the United States Navigation Company, was asked what were the relations between that company and the Smith-Reardon Line, and he answered that it was the general agent of that company to represent general cargo boats, and the appellants objected to that question and answer. The court then asked, "How were you appointed?" and the witness replied, "By correspondence; and our vice president went over to Cardiff, Wales, and made the connection." Objection was also made to this question and answer, which was overruled, and the witness answered:
"We only represented the Reardon Smith steamers accumulating cargoes for certain ports like Hamburg and Liverpool where we had regular service according to our schedule, not on full cargoes."
The appellants then excepted to the "ruling of the court in permitting the witness to answer said question," and that is the third exception.
If the United States Navigation Company was the general agent of the Smith-Reardon Line, then, in view of all the testimony in the case, there was no reversible error in admitting the contract of agency and the cancellation thereof, because later in the case the signatures of the officers of the Navigation Company to that contract and the letter of cancellation were regularly proved, and the whole question turns therefore on whether the evidence did show that the Navigation Company was authorized to employ Carlin as the agent of the Reardon-Smith Line. The witness, in giving the testimony involved in the third exception, was obviously not attempting to construe the correspondence to which he referred, but was describing a status which resulted from the course of business between the Reardon-Smith Line and the Navigation Company, and while the witness should not have been permitted to state the legal effect of documents not proved in the case, his statement could not have injured the appellants in view of the fact that there was in the case evidence sufficient to have warranted the court in concluding that the Navigation Company was authorized on behalf of the Smith-Reardon Line to employ Carlin as the latter's agent.
It is uncontradicted that, before that contract, Carlin met W. G. Liley, resident director in the United States of the Reardon-Smith Line, and its American representative at his office in New York at the request of Mr. Oelsner, president of the Navigation Company, and at that interview at which Mr. Oelsner was present, he (Liley) approved the arrangement of establishing a line in Baltimore, and that thenceforth Liley considered Carlin & Co. as his Baltimore agents; that after the contract Sir William Reardon Smith, chairman of the board of directors of Sir William Reardon Smith & Sons, and Liley, visited Carlin in Baltimore and told him that he (Smith) was "quite pleased" with the way things were going; that the Navigation Company advertised itself in the trade journals as the general agents of the Reardon-Smith Lines; that it represented that company in accumulating cargo at certain ports where that company operated a regular schedule; and that for about a year Carlin acted as agent in Baltimore for the Reardon-Smith Company's "berth" or "full cargo" business, and that the only authority he had to act as such agent was derived from the contract with the Navigation Company. This evidence was, we think, sufficient to warrant the inference that the Navigation Company was authorized to employ Carlin, and to make a contract of agency with him, and also to cancel it, and we find therefore no reversible error in the rulings involved in the first three exceptions.
The fourth exception relates to the action of the court in permitting the appellee to prove that the Baltimore venture turned out unprofitably That evidence reflected upon the good faith of the appellee in terminating the agency, and was in our opinion properly admitted.
The court, over appellants' objection, permitted the appellee to offer in evidence clippings of advertisements of sailings of the appellee's ships engaged in the general cargo business from issues of the New York Commercial and the Journal of Commerce of August 9, and August 11, 1923, and a sailing list, in all of which the Navigation Company described itself as the "General Agents" of the Smith-Reardon Line, and those rulings are the subject of the fifth exception. This evidence tended to prove that the...
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