Seaver v. Bradley

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
• Writing for the Court: HOLMES, C.J.
• Citation: Seaver v. Bradley, 60 N. E. 795, 179 Mass. 329 (Mass. 1901)
• Decision Date: 18 June 1901
• Parties: SEAVER v. BRADLEY.

179 Mass. 329

60 N.E. 795

SEAVER v. BRADLEY.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk.

June 18, 1901

COUNSEL

Daggett & Young, for plaintiff.

John Lowell and James A. Lowell, for defendant.

OPINION

HOLMES C.J.

Those who maintain a passenger elevator in an office building are not 'common carriers of passengers' within the meaning of Pub. St. c. 73, § 6. We assume that that section is not prevented from applying because it represents a statute passed before such elevators were in familiar use. But the words do not describe the owners of an elevator. The modern liability of common carriers of goods is a resultant of the two long accepted doctrines that bailees were answerable for the loss of goods in their charge, although happening without their fault, unless it was due to the public enemy, and that those exercising a common calling were bound to exercise it on demand and to show skill in their calling. Both doctrines have disappeared, although they have left this hybrid descendant. The law of common carriers of passengers, so far as peculiar to them, is a brother of the half blood. It also goes back to the old principles concerning common callings. Carriers not exercising a common calling as such are not common carriers whatever their liabilities may be. But the defendant did not exercise the common calling of a carrier, as sufficiently appears from the fact that he might have shut the elevator door in ...