John I. Haas, Inc. v. American Export Lines, Inc.

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Suit was brought below by the importer of one hundred sixty-four bales of Styrian hops it had sold to breweries against the steamship company that brought the hops to Baltimore, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., which acted both as operator of the pier at which the hops were unloaded and as the initial rail carrier, and Superintendence Co., Inc., which sampled and weighed the bales at the pier, for the value of forty-seven of the bales which, at the end of a rail journey at San Francisco, were found on inspection to have become contaminated by oil, grease and moisture and were rejected in part as to twenty bales and in whole as to twenty-seven bales by the brewery there to whom they had been consigned. The case was heard by the court sitting without a jury, and the significant facts were presented almost entirely by deposi ⁷⁶ tions. The court found that the bales were delivered in good condition by the steamship company and that the importer had not proven that the oil, grease or moisture had been caused by the Superintendence Company.

Judge Carter held that the railroad was not liable either as warehouseman—where it “is held to the duty of care with which a reasonable man would treat his own possessions”—or as a common carrier—where it “is held to be an insurer of the goods, and his liability can be rebutted only by a showing of inherent vice or an act of God, etc.”' He found as facts that the “predominant damage” to the hops-was mold; the mold was caused by moisture; to prevent sweating and hence mold, hops are customarily stored or kept in cool or freezing temperature; the hops were transported from Baltimore to San Francisco in an unrefrigerated car, no request having been made for a refrigerated car, and because the hops were not refrigerated during transit they sweated and the sweating-caused the damage. There was testimony from which the trier of fact properly could have found, as he did, that there was no oil, grease or moisture on or in the bales as a result of their handling by the Superintendence Company or by the railroad as warehouseman.. This included the following facts: (a) all of the one hundred sixty-four bales received the same handling at the same pier before they were delivered to a carrier and none was damaged but the forty-seven bales which were shipped to San Francisco (forty-one bales were sent in one lot to a Milwaukee brewery by motor carrier, as were twenty-seven other bales to a Baltimore brewery by another truck line, and all were undamaged and accepted by the brewery) ; (b) another lot of forty-nine bales were sent by rail to Los Angeles, delivered undamaged and accepted by the consignee brewery there; and (c) the freight waybill for the Los Angeles shipment bore the notation “all covers dirty” as did the waybill covering the San Francisco shipment here involved, and the testimony was that if the bales had shown signs of oil or grease or moisture, the notation would not have been “dirty” since this connoted only ordinary dirt resulting from customary handling. Cf.

Adams Express Co. v. White, 132 Md. 626, 629 . We think, however, (a) that the evidence before the trial ⁷⁷ judge did not permit the finding he made as to the cause of the damage to the hops that were shipped to San Francisco-, and that therefore his finding was clearly erroneous, and (b) that although the controlling law as to the liability of the railroad as a common carrier was correctly stated, it was not correctly applied. Where a plaintiff proves that goods were delivered to a carrier in good condition and were in bad condition upon arrival at destination, a presumption arises that the damage occurred through the fault or negligence of the carrier, and this casts upon the carrier the burden of going forward and sho-wing either that the goods were not in good condition when delivered to the carrier or that the damage was occasioned by some cause which excepts the carrier from absolute liability, such as inherent vice or infirmity of the goods or act of God. 1 Accordingly, the mere proof of delivery of the goods to the carrier in good condition and of their arrival at the place of destination in damaged condition makes out a prima facie case against the carrier, so that if no satisfactory explanation is given as to how the damage occurred, the carrier may be held liable. See 14 Am.

Jur. 2d Carriers, Sec. 620, p. 134; Galveston, H. & S. A. R. Co. v. Wallace, 223 U. S. 481 , 56 L. Ed. 516 ; P., B. & W. R. Co. v. Diffendal, 109 Md. 494 ; Penna. R. R. Co. v. Walker, 147 Md. 323 ; Ledoux v. Railway Express Agency (Vt.), 35 A. 2d 665 ; and Richards Mach. Co. v. McNamara Motor Express, Inc. (Wis.), 97 N. W. 2d 396 . Cf.

Chesapeake & O. R. Co. v. Thompson Mfg. Co., 270 U. S. 416 , 70 L. Ed. 659 . The evidence in the present case showed that the railroad as a carrier received the forty-seven bales of hops consigned to San Francisco in good condition and that they arrived at destination damaged from penetration of oil, grease and moisture. The ⁷⁸ brewery to whom the shipment was consigned was persuaded to accept twenty of the least damaged bales upon being granted an allowance for the damaged portions of the hops, but it refused to accept the remaining bales after it had sampled each one and found the damage so extensive as to make the hops therein unusable.

The testimony in the depositions