Baltimore Steam Packet Co. v. Smith

Cochran, J., delivered the opinion of this Court: The appellee brought this suit to recover the value of a-trunk and contents, lost while being transported from Baltimore to Wilmington, North Carolina. The evidence shows, that the appellant was proprietor of' the Bay line of steamboats running between Baltimore and Portsmouth, Ya.; that in March 1857, the appellee, with his daughter and servant, as passengers on through tickets from New York to Wilmington, traveled on one of the appellants’ boats from Baltimore to Portsmouth, and thence-by the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad, and the Wilmington Railroad to Wilmington; that his baggage was delivered on board of the boat at Baltimore, and checked for Wilmington, at which place he presented the check offered in evidence, and demanded the trunk, for which it was given;, that the trunk called for, could not be found, and that it belonged to him, and contained wearing apparel prepared for his daughter, then nineteen years of age. The exceptions of the defendant below, present the onlv ⁴⁰⁸ questions necessary to be considered in disposing of tbe appeals in tbis case, and they are : 1st, whether there was evidence of a delivery of the trunk to the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad Company by the appellant, sufficient to go to the jury; and, 2nd, whether, upon the proof, the appellee can maintain this action for the value of the trunk and contents thus shown to have been lost. The evidence relied on by the appellant, as tending to show that the trunk was delivered to the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad Company, and, for that reason, was legally sufficient to go to the jury, was, that of a clerk employed on one of the appellants' boats, who testified, that “if a trunk is not delivered to the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad Company at Portsmouth, it is always brought back to the office in Baltimore; that he knew of no such occurrence in March 185⁷; that the baggage agents on board of the appellants' boats, made lists of the through baggage delivered by them to the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad Company, and that these lists were not preserved." This testimony proves but little, if anything more, than the appellants’ usual or customary course of dealing with baggage received for transportation, and in that respect, no more than would be presumed of any one engaged in the business of a common carrier.

The nature of that kind of undertaking, not only requires, but implies the adoption of some regular method or system in receiving, transporting and preserving such property as the carrier receives in the way of his business; and in this case, without positive proof that the trunk was properly delivered by the appellant at Portsmouth, any presumption that could arise in the appellants’ favor, from the evidence in question, would be repelled by one equally strong in favor of the carriers from that point to Wilmington. And, besides, the loss of the