Piedmont Manufacturing Co. v. Columbia & Greenville Railroad

Citations

• 19 S.C. 353
• 1883 S.C. LEXIS 89

Syllabus

<p>1. A common carrier is responsible to the full extent of his liability as such, notwithstanding any contract he may make with reference thereto; but one not a common carrier may make any lawful contract which the parties choose.</p> <p>2. The true test of a common carrier is: Is it optional with him whether he will carry or not, or is it his legal duty to carry for all alike ? If the latter, he is a common carrier; if the former, he is not.</p> <p>3. A company chartered and organized for railroad transportation is a common carrier over its own line, but it is not so beyond its termini and over connecting lines unless it has become so by usage, character of business or contract.</p> <p>r The payment of freight and passenger fare through to points beyond the termini of a railroad does not make it a common carrier over other roads to the point of destination.</p> <p>4 5. The duty or obligation to convey the goods beyond its own line of road, and to deliver them at a point beyond its own line, is not imposed by law, but depends upon the contract between the shipper and the company.</p> <p>6. The hill of lading is the contract between the shipper and the company by which the company agrees to transport and deliver beyond its own line, and the terms and conditions of the contract regulate and determine the duties and obligations of the contracting parties.</p> <p>7. The signature of the shipper is not necessary to establish his assent to the terms of a bill of lading.</p> <p>8. It is the duty of the judge to construe a written contract, hut where there is dispute as to which of two agreements the parties acted under, that is an issue of fact which it is the province of the jury to determine.</p> <p>9. This case distinguished from Kyle v. Laurens Railroad Company, 10 Rich. 382.</p> <p>:io. Letters from the president of a railroad company, written after the destruction of goods by fire, admitting the liability of his company therefor, are not evidence against the corpora