Penn Clothing Co. v. United States Express Co.

Citations

• 48 Pa. Super. 520
• 1912 Pa. Super. LEXIS 406

Syllabus

<p>Carriers — Common carriers — Exemption from liability — Negligence—Loss in carrier’s warehouse — Affidavit of defense.</p> <p>1. While in Pennsylvania a carrier may not by contract exempt itself from liability for a loss caused by its own negligence, yet if it shows that a loss has resulted from other causes, there exists no reason why it may not by contract exempt itself entirely from liability, or limit the extent thereof as any ordinary individual could do.</p> <p>2. Where goods have been delivered to a carrier under a contract exempting the carrier from liability, except for its own negligence, and providing that the carrier should not be obliged to personally deliver the goods to the consignee at points where no delivery service is available, an affidavit of defense in a suit to recover the loss of the goods is sufficient, which avers that the goods were delivered at the company’s warehouse at a point where there was no delivery service, and that they were stolen from the warehouse on the night of their arrival without “any negligence whatever upon the part of the said defendant or its agents.”</p> <p>3. Such an affidavit is not open to the charge of insufficiency because it does not undertake in detail to negative every fact from which a possible inference of some negligence on the part of the defendant or its servants might be drawn.</p>