DocketNumber: 26004
Citation Numbers: 55 Ga. App. 519
Judges: Stephens
Filed Date: 3/17/1937
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 1/12/2023
1. A carrier is not liable for damage to a shipment of freight from an unexpected and unprecedented flood amounting to an act. of God where no negligence of the carrier in handling the shipment in any way contributed to the damage. Northwestern Consolidated Milling Co. v. Chicago &c. R. Co., 135 Minn. 363 (160 N. W. 1028); Southern Railway Co. v. International Vegetable Oil Co., 43 Ga. App. 489 (159 S. E. 773); Seaboard Air-Line Ry Co. v. Mullin, 70 Fla. 450 (70 So. 467, L. R. A. 1916D, 982, Ann. Cas. 1918A, 576); Moffatt Commission Co. v. Union Pacific R. Co., 113 Mo. App. 544 (88 S. W. 117).
2. On the trial of a suit by a shipper against a carrier, to recover damages for injury to a shipment of freight, where it appeared from the evidence that the carrier, to whom the plaintiff had delivered the freight for transportation in interstate commerce, unloaded the freight at the carrier’s terminal and placed it on a pier for delivery to a connecting water carrier, but, on account of the large number of freight-cars in the train to be unloaded, the delivery of the freight, was delayed and the freight was not unloaded on the pier until five minutes after the last boat calling at the pier on that date to pick up freight had left, and it was necessary for the shipment to lie over until the next day, to be picked up by a boat calling at the pier; and where, about nine or ten o’clock at night after the shipment had been placed on the pier, a storm came up which caused the tide to rise considerably, but where the carrier, through its agent in charge of the freight terminals at - the pier, appraised the situation, and concluded that there was no danger of the shipment being engulfed by the rising tide while on the pier, and failed to move the shipment and permitted the carrier’s laborers to disperse, and during the night the tide receded, but the next morning about nine o’clock, and before a boat called at the pier, the tide returned suddenly, without warning, as a result of the
Judgment affirmed.