Belt's Wharf Warehouses, Inc. v. International Products Corp.

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. A corporate warehouseman appeals from a judgment on the verdict of a jury for damage to goods stored in its charge caused by the high tide that came above the floor of its pier warehouse when hurricane “Connie” struck Baltimore in August of 1955. Code, 1951, Art. 14A, Sec. 21, declares the common law in the following language: “A warehouseman shall be liable for any loss or injury to the goods caused by his failure to exercise such care in regard to them as a reasonably careful owner of similar goods would exercise, but he shall not be liable, in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, for any loss or injury to the goods which could not have been avoided by the exercise of such care.” The issues between the parties are whether the warehouseman used such care in regard to the goods as a reasonably careful owner would have used and whether the damage could have been avoided, even if due care had been used. The appellant, Belt’s Wharf Warehouses, Inc., has been engaged in the warehouse business on the waterfront of Baltimore for many years.

Belt’s operates a number of separate but connected warehouses and one, known as pier 15, detached from the others, is a covered shed with sheet metal sides on a wooden floor, which is built on piles over Baltimore harbor. Pier 15 is one hundred ninety feet long and the harbor end is lower than the shore end, having settled as the years went by. Its floor is four feet eight inches above normal high tide. It is used mainly for bulk merchandise or merchandise which is not likely to be moved in and out often.

Sometime after the middle of July, 1955, International Products Corporation, the appellee, advised Belt’s that they would need some storage space for quebracho extract, a substance derived from the bark of trees and used by leather com ⁵⁸⁸ panies for tanning, with which Belt’s was familiar. Belt’s-officials decided to store the extract on pier 15. All of the extract came to the warehouse in railroad cars and the first shipment arrived on August 2. The warehouse receipts-offered in evidence show that on August 2, 3, and 4 approximately seven hundred bags were received each day and placed on the harbor end of pier 15, that on August 5 approximately two thousand bags were received and so stored, and that on August 8 six hundred thirty more bags came to rest on top of or near their predecessors.

There were accepted and stored twelve hundred sixty bags on August 10, six hundred thirty bags on August 11, and six hundred sixteen bags on August 12. On the night of August 12 and the morning of August 13, the center of hurricane “Connie” passed to the west of Baltimore and, as a result, the tides were abnormally high and water flooded the harbor end of pier 15, although it did not affect the shore end, and many of the bags of quebracho extract were damaged. Belt’s says that the hurricane and the resulting high tide were acts of God. It admits that an act of God does not exonerate it from liability if damage was caused in whole or in part by its negligence, but argues that it was not negligent because it was entitled to rely, and did rely, on reports from the weather bureau that indicated that the tide, at its height, would be a foot or more below the floor of the warehouse.

It cites cases such as Merchants Ice & Cold Storage Co. v. United Produce Co. (Ky.), 131 S. W. 2d 469 , and Farr Co. v. Union Pacific Railroad (10th Cir.), 106 F. 2d 437 , where the evidence was that the company could reasonably have relied on, and in fact did rely on, predictions of the weather bureau which were upset by unprecedented water heights and there was nothing to show that there had been previous similar invasions of the warehouse or any other warnings that should have caused the warehouseman, as a prudent operator, to anticipate what did in fact occur. We think the evidence in the case before us is different to a degree that renders the cases relied on by appellant to be distinguishable and not persuasive. It permitted the jury to find (1) that Belt’s officials knew of previous high tides ⁵⁸⁹ which had invaded pier 15 or had lapped at its floor boards, and (2) that they did not in fact rely on the predictions of the weather bureau as to the course of “Connie” or as to the height of the tides. There was testimony to show that in the storm of August, 1933, water came into pier 15 and that it also came in during a storm in 1954, although this is disputed by Belt’s, which says that on the latter occasion it was only within two or three inches of the floor.

In his charge to the jury, the trial court stated several times, in summing up the evidence, that, including the 1955 occurrence, there had been three times in twenty-three years in which water had come into pier 15, and there was no exception to the charge on this point. There was testimony that Belt’s manager and his assistants were apprehensive all during the week of August 7 about the possibility of pier 15 being flooded, that they knew that the tides, from time to time in storms, had been higher than forecast by the weather bureau. It can be inferred from the testimony that they realized fully what was manifest from the weather bureau reports, that the course of a hurricane is difficult, if not impossible, to predict very far in advance, and that the height of the accompanying tide at any given place depends on the relation of that place to the center of the hurricane and on other factors which cannot be precisely predicted. The evidence permitted a finding by reasonable men that Belt’s officials contemplated the definite possibility that water would come into pier 15 when the storm struck but that they felt they could do nothing about it.

The manager of the company testified: “* * * all during the week we were very much concerned about Hurricane ‘Connie’. We were always surveying the situation as to what could possibly be done. * *