Baltimore & O.R. Co. v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Co.
| Decision Date | 27 June 1921 |
| Docket Number | 29. |
| Citation | 114 A. 730,138 Md. 604 |
| Parties | BALTIMORE & O. R. CO. v. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CO. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Superior Court of Baltimore City; Henry Duffy, Judge.
"To be officially reported."
Action by the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company, to the use of the Crown Cork Company, Limited, against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed, and new trial awarded.
Argued before BOYD, C.J., and BRISCOE, THOMAS, URNER, STOCKBRIDGE ADKINS, and OFFUTT, JJ.
W Calvin Chesnut and Duncan K. Brent, both of Baltimore (Allen S. Bowie, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.
Arthur W. Machen, Jr., and Raymond S. Williams, both of Baltimore (Hershey, Machen, Donaldson & Williams, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.
A carload of tin plate was destroyed by fire on a pier of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company while awaiting transfer at Locust Point, Md., to a vessel of the Garland Steamship Line. The railroad company is charged with liability in this suit on the theory that its relation to the shipment was still that of carrier at the time of the fire. If that relation had ceased to exist, and the railroad company was merely in the position of a warehouseman of the property when the fire occurred, it is not chargeable with any liability on account of the loss, which is conceded to have happened without any negligence on its part.
The shipment originated at Woodlawn, Pa. It consisted of 380 boxes of tin plate contained in car No. 33767 of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Company. It was consigned by Jones & Laughlin Steel Company to the Crown Cork Company Limited, and was accepted for transportation over the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie and the Baltimore & Ohio lines to Locust Point for export to London. The tin plate was received at Woodlawn by the initial carrier on October 9, 1917, and arrived at Locust Point on the morning of October 22d. The freight was prepaid "to steamer" and included lighterage. Upon the bill of lading were noted the numbers of the government license and Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company permit authorizing the shipment and necessary to be obtained under the war regulations then in force. The permit referred to was issued at the request of the Crown Cork & Seal Company, of Baltimore, which was the real purchaser of the tin plate mentioned in the bill of lading. It was stated in the permit that the material was intended for delivery to the Garland Steamship Company. On October 12th the Crown Cork & Seal Company, of which the Crown Cork Company, the consignee of the tin plate, is a foreign subsidiary, notified the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company that the steamship Alamance, of the Garland Line, was the vessel to which the carload of tin plate was to be delivered.
The car reached Locust Point in ample time for the transfer of the tin plate to the designated steamer, which sailed on October 29th, but for lack of available cargo space on that vessel the steamship Norlina, of the same line, scheduled to sail three days later, was substituted. Before the shipment could be transferred to the Norlina it was destroyed by the fire already mentioned, which occurred on October 29th. The tin plate was then on the Baltimore & Ohio pier, where it had been unloaded while directions for its delivery to the steamer were being awaited. On the day after the shipment was received at Locust Point the railroad company notified the steamship company of its arrival and of the fact that it was intended to be forwarded over the latter company's line. The railroad company did not inform the shipper or the consignee that the goods had reached its terminal. Because of this omission it is claimed that the railroad company's liability as carrier had not ended, but was subsisting when the property was destroyed.
The bill of lading, which was nonnegotiable in form, stipulated as follows:
At common law the notice necessary to terminate the carrier's liability as insurer, and replace it with the less burdensome liability of a warehouseman, was required to be given to the shipper or consignee. But under the provisions quoted from the bill of lading in this case the notice designed to have such an effect had to be given to "the party entitled to receive" the goods to which that instrument refers. This is the evident meaning of the stipulation that property not removed, within the specified time, by the party entitled to receive it, should be subject only to the carrier's responsibility as warehouseman.
The Crown Cork & Seal Company was entitled to receive the tin plate and to direct its movement from the railroad terminal to which it had been brought for export. That corporation had bought the material on its own account, as appears from the correspondence in the record. It was evidently exercising the rights of ownership when it designated the steamship line and the particular vessel by which the goods were to be transported to its subsidiary company in England. For all the purposes of the present inquiry the consignee was the Crown Cork & Seal Company. So far as the railroad company's contract of carriage was concerned the destination was Locust Point; but it further undertook, for the amount of the prepaid freight, to convey the goods to the steamer selected for their sea transportation. When the goods arrived at the point where they were in a position to be transferred to the steamer, as soon as it was ready for their reception, the defendant, by giving notice of their arrival to "the party entitled to receive" the shipment, or its authorized agent, could secure the early termination of the insurer's liability incident to a common carrier's undertaking, and assume the more limited responsibility to which a warehouseman is subject. The only notice actually given was that communicated to the Garland Steamship Company, and unless it had authority to act as the agent of the Crown Cork & Seal Company in the control and disposition, at that time and place, of the goods subsequently destroyed by fire, the railroad company should be held liable for the loss, for it would not then be in the position of having complied with the condition in the bill of lading upon which its relief from such a liability depends. If, however, the steamship company was invested with the authority of such an agency as we have just described, the railroad company ought not to be amenable to this suit, as the loss for which it is brought occurred more than the prescribed period of 48 hours after the notice to the steamship company was delivered.
At the trial below, before the court sitting as a jury, instructions were granted, at the request of the plaintiff, that if the defendant railroad company accepted the carload of tin plate for conveyance to Locust Point and delivery to the Garland Steamship Company for transportation to England, and that the defendant did not so deliver, but unloaded the goods on its pier, where they were destroyed by fire, and that the plaintiff made claim on account of the loss within six months, as required by the bill of lading, as to which there was no dispute, then the plaintiff was entitled to recover the value of the goods at the time and place of shipment with...
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