Great Western Railway Co. v. Burns

Citations

• 60 Ill. 284

Syllabus

<p>1. Railway compaky — common carriers — their duty. A railway company having received a large quantity of wool for transportation to Boston, carried it to within fifty miles of the terminus of their road, where, owing to the obstruction of the road with which it connected on the route to Boston, from snow, the wool was stored for two months, within which time the price declined in the Boston market: Held, that the company were liable, if for no other reason, because the agents of the company knew that the road was so blocked with freight that the wool could not go through in a reasonable time, and failed to inform the shipper of the fact, that he might have either sold at the point whence shipped, or have selected another route if he had so chosen.</p> <p>2. The company, as a common carrier, haying received the wool without giving notice, were required to carry it through in a reasonable time or respond in damages growing out of the delay.</p> <p>8. The company were liable for another reason: When they stored the wool, there were twelve hundred car loads of freight stored ahead of the wool, and when the track of the other road w;as cleared and freight could be shipped through, there was sent forward nineteen hundred car loads before this wool was reshipped. The wool should have been reshipped in its turn, and the road had no right to give freight, shipped after it was, the precedence. Nor was the fact, that a portion of the latter shipments were perishable freight and live stock, any legal excuse for the delay in reshipping the wool, as they should have declined to receive such freight until it could be sent through without delaying freight having the precedence.</p> <p>4. Nor is it any defense that the wool was shipped from the warehouse in which the company had stored it, in advance of other goods stored there before the wool, and having the precedence, as, if the company had received no new freight until the blockade was removed, the wool would have gone throug