Chicago St Ry Co v. Solan
| Decision Date | 17 January 1898 |
| Docket Number | No. 73,73 |
| Citation | 42 L.Ed. 688,169 U.S. 133,18 S.Ct. 289 |
| Parties | CHICAGO, M. & ST. P. RY. CO. v. SOLAN |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Burton Hanson, Geo. R. Peck, and George E. Clarke, for plaintiff in error.
S. M. Stockslager, for defendant in error.
This was an action brought in an inferior court of the state of Iowa against a railroad corporation incorporated under the laws of the state of Wisconsin, and authorized to transact business in the state of Iowa, and having a railroad extending from Rock Valley, in Iowa, to Chicago, in Illinois, to recover $10,000 as damages for injuries suffered by the plaintiff between Boyden and Sheldon, in Iowa, from the derailing, by the defendant's negligence, of a caboose attached to a freight train of the defendant, in which the plaintiff was traveling under a written contract by which the defendant agreed to carry him with cattle from Rock Valley to Chicago.
The defendant, in its answer, denied its negligence, and alleged contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff, and further alleged that, by a clause in the contract under which the plaintiff and the cattle were carried, it was, 'among other things, expressly stipulated 'that the company shall in no event be liable to the owner or person in charge of said stock for any injury to his person in any amount exceeding the sum of $500'; that, in consideration of said clause in said contract, the defendant entered into a contract for the transportation of said stock from Rock Valley, Iowa, to Chicago, Ill., for a less sum than its regular, usual charges, which fact the owner and shipper of said stock and the plaintiff all well knew at the time of the making of the said contract, and at the time the plaintiff started in transit with said stock from Rock Valley, Iowa, to Chicago, Ill.; that said contract related exclusively to interstate transportation, and constituted an interstate commerce transaction; and that the plaintiff and the owner and shipper of said stock, having accepted the benefits of said contract, are now estopped from questioning its validity or disavowing the same; that at common law said contract is a valid and legal contract; and that section 1308 of the Code of Iowa is void and unconstitutional, so far as said contract is concerned, as being an attempt to regulate and limit contracts relating to interstate commerce; that, under and by virtue of the terms of said contract, plaintiff is not entitled, in any event, to judgment herein to exceed the sum of $500.'
The section of the Code of Iowa referred to in the answer is as follows: 'No contract, receipt, rule or regulation shall exempt any corporation engaged in transporting persons or property by railway from liability of a common carrier, or carrier of passengers, which would exist had no contract, receipt, rule or regulation been made or entered into.' Code Iowa 1873, § 1308.
At the trial it appeared that the plaintiff and the cattle under his charge were carried under such a contract as alleged in the answer, and that he suffered injuries as alleged in the declaration; and the court, against the defendant's objections and exceptions, excluded evidence offered by the defendant that the rate on cattle carried the same distance under contracts other than this one was 50 per cent. higher than was charged by this contract, and instructed the jury that, if the defendant was negligent and the plaintiff was without fault, the jury should allow him such a sum as would compensate him for his injuries, and that the clause in the contract limiting the plaintiff's damages to $500 was not permitted by law, and was void.
The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff in the sum of $1,000, upon which judgment was rendered. The defendant appealed to the supreme court of Iowa, which affirmed the judgment. 95 Iowa, 260, 63 N. W. 692. The defendant sued out this writ of error.
By the law of this country, as declared by this court, in the absence of any statute controlling the subject, any contract by which a common carrier of goods or passengers undertakes to exempt himself from all responsibility for loss or damage arising from the negligence of himself or his servants is void as against public policy, as attempting to put off the essential duties resting upon every public carrier by virtue of his employment, and as tending to defeat the fundamental principle on which the law of common carriers was established,—the securing of the utmost care and diligence in the performance of their important duties to the public. Railroad Co. v. Lockwood, 17 Wall. 357; Steam Co. v. Phenix Ins. Co., 129 U. S. 397, 9 Sup. Ct. 469; Compania La Flecha v. Brauer, 168 U. S. 104, 117, 18 Sup. Ct. 12. In the leading case of Railroad Co. v. Lockwood, above cited, it was accordingly adjudged that an agreement in writing with a railroad company, by which a drover traveling with his cattle upon one of its trains, in consideration of his cattle being carried at less rates, stipulated to take all risk of injury to them and of personal injury to himself, did not exempt the company from all responsibility for injuries to him caused by the negligence of its servants. In Hart v. Railroad Co., 112 U. S. 331, 5 Sup. Ct. 151, the general rule was affirmed; but a contract fairly made between a railroad company and the owner of goods, by which the latter was to pay a rate of freight based on the condition that the company assumed liability only to the extent of an agreed...
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