Meltzer v. Baltimore & OR Co.

• Citation: 38 F. Supp. 391
• Decision Date: 28 January 1941
• Docket Number: No. 814.,814.
• Parties: MELTZER v. BALTIMORE & O. R. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

38 F. Supp. 391

MELTZER v. BALTIMORE & O. R. CO.

No. 814.

District Court, E. D. Pennsylvania.

January 28, 1941.

Joseph S. Kleinbard, of Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff.

Howard Burtt, of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.

KIRKPATRICK, District Judge.

This is a suit to recover damages for injuries to 127 carloads of watermelons delivered by the defendant railroad company to the plaintiff, the consignee, at Philadelphia.

In the case of Meltzer v. Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 29 F.Supp. 840, 842, 841 (herein referred to as the first Meltzer case, involving a number of shipments which had nothing to do with those in this case), this court ruled that it was proper to accept the plaintiff's evidence of prices obtained by him, as prima facie evidence of his "full actual loss." The consignee's full actual loss ordinarily is established by the difference between the fair market value of the goods undamaged and their fair market value as delivered in damaged condition, and it should be clearly understood that no new measure of damages, differing from the ordinary one, was adopted in that case.

The opinion in the first Meltzer case had to do entirely with the kind of evidence which would be accepted. Because of the method of selling melons from the railroad cars, which existed in Philadelphia, and which was known to the carrier, damaged melons were never segregated and sold separately, and consequently, there being no market, it was practically impossible to produce direct evidence of their market value. The defendant contended that, for this reason, the plaintiff could not recover anything, but I felt that to deny all relief would be grossly unjust, and that the difference between the sound value of the melons and their value as damaged could be arrived at with approximate accuracy by starting with the plaintiff's money loss on his total sales—that is, the difference between the fair market value on date of arrival of sound melons and the price which he actually received—and then making certain adjustments in order to reach approximate accuracy. For example, there were some cars as to which the money loss exceeded the total market value of all the damaged melons had they been in sound condition. On the theory that the plaintiff could not recover more than the latter figure, that figure fixed an upper limit for the damages allowable on any particular shipment.

One argument which the defendant made against this method of arriving at the damages was that, in many cases, the plaintiff's money loss was increased by the facts that buyers usually based their ...