Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/350

334 334 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. were these: The plaintififs contracted in New York with a trans- portation company for the carriage of certain goods by that com- pany from New York to Boston, and for delivery to the plaintiffs, who were the consignees. The goods were received by the defend- ants who were connecting carriers over the latter part of the route, and were residents of Massachusetts. The plaintiffs called for the goods when they arrived at Boston, but a delivery was refused until the next day, as it was not convenient to deliver them. They were unloaded and placed in the defendant's warehouse the same afternoon, but too late for delivery; and during the night the warehouse with the goods was destroyed by fire. The action was to recover the loss. The defendants cited decisions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts,^ to show that they were not liable, and it was admitted in the opinion that under those decisions the opera- tors of a railroad, as matter of law, cease to be common carriers and become warehousemen, when the duty of transportation is completed and goods are deposited in a warehouse to await the orders of the consignee. Nevertheless the court reversed the judg- ment for the defendant affirmed by the general term of the court below, and ordered judgment for the plaintiff in the amount of his claim. If the earliest Massachusetts decision covering the point in issue made the law for that State, the New York court could not refuse to follow it, without flagrantly shirking its duty. If it was no more than evidence of the law, the court was of course at liberty to disregard it in the light of better evidence. The court itself seems to have taken this view, for the opinion concedes that, if there had been a positive statute of Massachusetts providing that a carrier's liability should cease when the goods had been deposited in a suitable warehouse at the end of the route, a different conclu- sion would have been required. There was no intention on the part of the court to repudiate the law of Massachusetts ; the inten- tion was to declare what that law was. This is quite apparent in these concluding sentences of the unanimous opinion delivered by Judge Miller: " The rule adopted in the Massachusetts cases cannot be sustained. It should not be overlooked that the point presented does not involve solely a question as to a local law, but part of a system of general commercial law. That the court in Massachusetts had decided the law contrary to 1 Norway Co. v. B. & M. R. R. Co., i Gray, 263"; Rice v. Hart, 118 Mass. 201 ; and others.