United States v. Philadelphia & R. Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 14 May 1915
• Docket Number: 3296.
• Citation: 223 F. 207
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. PHILADELPHIA & R. RY. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania

223 F. 207

UNITED STATES v. PHILADELPHIA & R. RY. CO.

No. 3296.

United States District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania.

May 14, 1915

Robert J. Sterrett, Asst. U.S. Atty., and Francis Fisher Kane, U.S Atty., both of Philadelphia, Pa., for the United States.

Wm Clarke Mason, of Philadelphia, Pa., for defendant.

DICKINSON District Judge.

This is an action for the penalty imposed by the act of Congress of June 29, 1906. By agreement trial by jury was waived and the cause heard by the court. It is one of several like, or at least similar, cases. The questions involved arise out of this state of facts:

A car load of 150 hogs were shipped from the National Stockyards in Chicago, consigned to A. H. March Packing Company at Bridgeport. They were unloaded, watered, and fed in Pittsburgh, and there transferred to car P.L. 647680 and transported over defendant's railroad to destination. The place of delivery at which the carriage ended was in the freightyard of defendant at a point on a siding opposite a runway or chute leading into a cattle pen. This consisted of a space inclosed with a fence. There was no shelter provided and no construction other than the inclosing fence. The car reached the chute at 8 o'clock, and the consignees were notified at 9:30 p.m. of March 6, 1914, to unload. The latter hour was 2 hours within the time limit. The hogs were not unloaded until 6:15 a.m., 6 hours and 45 minutes beyond the time limit.

There were two causes of delay, both of which were operating to prevent unloading. One was that the consignees' place of business was closed between 5:30 p.m. and 6 o'clock a.m., and there were no men at hand to drive the hogs, and besides this it was not practicable to drive them in the dark. The other cause was that a storm, which could be fairly characterized as a blizzard, was raging at the time. The weather was cold and there was a heavy fall of snow upon the ground. Good judgment dictated that the hogs be kept in the car, in preference to being turned into the open pen. The practice was to turn hogs into the pen. From this they were taken by the employes of the consignees to the yards of the latter, which were from one-fifth to one-quarter of a mile away.

The defendant company had direct notice of the conditions prevailing at this place of delivery. Shipments of hogs reached the siding at times after dark, and the hogs could not be taken from the pen until the next morning, and after the expiration of the feeding time limit. The A. H. March Company was the only consignee to whom deliveries were made at this pen. For whatever bearing this fact may have upon the case, it is found that the siding and pen were maintained for the sole use of this consignee. The notice of conditions was directly given to the railroad company in an application to have the railroad company provide a pen which gave shelter to the hogs-- proper and suitable protection. This the railroad company declined to do, thinking it would involve providing like accommodations to every shipper. This would have been impracticable.

Before formulating the specific questions which arise in this case out of its special facts, a few general observations may be helpful. It is to be recalled that the primary obligation of feeding these hogs was not upon the railroad. The obligation which is imposed upon them by the act of Congress is imposed upon them as a carrier, and only as long as the animals are in the course of transmission over the railroad. Moreover, what the railroad is required to do is required of it because of the default of the owner of the animals from whom by law the railroad can recoup the expenses to which it has been subjected. All of which the railroad company is called upon to do is therefore done during the carriage, and cannot be done after the carriage has ended. The motive behind this legislation is in one of its phases at least what may be characterized as humanitarian. The element of cruelty enters into the act of omission for which the penalty is imposed. The act of the carrier must have been 'knowing and willful.'

More than this, or as part of it, the act of omission must be one without the excuse of the intervention of unavoidable or unanticipated causes interfering with or preventing the things required to be done. In the instant case, the carriage was complete and the 'transp...