Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Rail Road v. Harper

Bartol, C. J., delivered the opinion of the court. ■ In this case the court below rejected the prayers offered on both sides, and gave two instructions to the jury. To this ruling, both parties reserved exceptions, and both have appealed; but, as the plaintiff recovered judgment, and does not ask for a reversal on her appeal, and as we have come to the conclusion the judgment must be affirmed, it is only necessary to express our opinion upon the questions presented by the defendant’s appeal. These arise upon the defendant’s prayers and the court’s instructions to the jury. It is the settled law of this court, that it is competent for the court below to reject the prayers offered and grant instructions to the jury in its own language, and where these are correct, and cover the whole ground, the judgment will not be reversed, though some of the prayers might have been properly granted.

Mut. Safety Ins. Co. v. Cohen, 3 Gill, 459 ; Hall v. Hall, 6 G. & J. 404 ; Keener v. Harrod, 2 Md. 63, 73, 74; N. Y. Ins. Co. v. Flack, 3 Md. 341 ; Baltimore v. Penington, 15 Md. 12, 17 .

It is also well settled that an appellant is not entitled to ask a reversal where no injury has been done him by the action of the court below. In this case, the material propositions presented in the defendant’s prayers were substantially granted in the court’s ^instructions to the jury. By those instructions the Rail Road Company was exempted from all responsibility for damage caused by the public enemy; its liability for the safe transportation of the plaintiff’s baggage was confined to the limits of its own road, and it was held bound only for the safe and prompt delivery to the agents of the connecting company on the line of travel. And the defendant got the benefit of exemption from all liability beyond the sum of one hundred dollars, unless the jury should find from the evidence the loss occurred from the want of ordinary .care on the part of the defendant.

Whether the court below was correct in allowing to the defendant the benefit of these limitations upon its liability as a common carrier, we express no opinion; the defendant has no right to complain of them on this appeal. It is proper to notice the particular points made by the appellant’s counsel in the'argument. The court’s instruction imposed the duty .upon ³⁴⁰ the defendant to prove that the baggage in question had been delivered “ with all possible dispatch ” at the terminus of its road, to the agents of the connecting company. It has been objected that the words,