Smith v. North American Transportation & Trading Co.

Citations

• 20 Wash. 580
• 44 L.R.A. 557

Syllabus

<p>CARRIERS-ABANDONMENT OF VOYAGE-DUTY TO PASSENGER—LOW WATER—ACT OF GOD—INSTRUCTIONS-EVIDENCE.</p> <p>Where a transportation, company agrees to take a passenger by steamer to a point within the interior of Alaska upon the Yukon river, but is compelled to abandon the trip until the next, season, by reason of the low stage of water in the river, the company cannot put the passenger off at any intermediate point, but it is its duty to return him free of charge to the point of embarkation.</p> <p>Where it appears from the evidence that defendant, after agreeing to transport plaintiff from Seattle to Dawson City in Alaska, and after carrying him to a point on the Yukon river. abandoned the trip for the season, a requested charge that if the jury “shall find that defendant carried plaintiff to Fort Yukon without any unreasonable delay, and at that place encountered a stage of water so low as to make a continuance of navigation towards Dawson impossible, that this constitutes the act of God, and that the company was excused from carrying him further towards Dawson until the stage of water should be sufficient,” was properly refused as inapplicable to the case, since it contained no qualification as to the duty of the defendant to inform itself concerning the stages of water on the route and the probability of its being able to carry out its contract.</p> <p>The fact that plaintiff’s witnesses have testified to a conversation to which plaintiff was in no wise a party does not warrant the defendant in putting in evidence further details of the conversation, to the effect that other parties had released defendant from liability for the performance of a contract to carry.</p>