Section 944 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri of 1889,
provided that,
"Whenever any property is received by a common carrier to be
transferred from one place to another within or without this state,
or when a railroad or other transportation company issues receipts
or bills of lading in this state, the common carrier, railroad or
transportation company issuing such bill of lading shall be liable
for any loss, damage or injury to such property caused by its
negligence or the negligence of any other common carrier, railroad,
or transportation company to which such property may be delivered,
or over whose line such property may pass, and the common carrier,
railroad, or transportation company issuing any such receipt or
bill of lading shall be entitled to recover, in a proper action,
the amount of any loss, damage or injury it may be required to pay
to the owner of such property from the common carrier, railroad, or
transportation company, through whose negligence the loss, damage
or injury may be sustained."
In commenting on this statute, the Supreme Court of Missouri
said:
"The provision of the statute is that 'wherever property is
received by a common carrier to be transferred from one place to
another.' This language does not restrict, but rather recognizes,
the right of the carrier to limit its contract of carriage to the
end of its own route, and there deliver the property to the
connecting carrier. There can be no doubt, then, that under the
statute, as well as under the English law, the carrier can, by
contract, limit its duty and obligation to carriage over its own
route."
Held that the statute, as thus interpreted, could not
be held to be repugnant to the Constitution of the United
States.
The statement of the case will be found in the opinion of the
Court.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
A statute of the State of Missouri, found in the Revised
Statutes of that State, 1889, c. 26, reads as follows:
Page 174 U. S. 581
"SEC. 944. Whenever any property is received by a common carrier
to be transferred from one place to another within or without this
state, or when a railroad or other transportation company issues
receipts or bills of lading in this state, the common carrier,
railroad or transportation company issuing such bill of lading
shall be liable for any loss, damage, or injury to such property
caused by its negligence or the negligence of any other common
carrier, railroad, or transportation company to which such property
may be delivered or over whose line such property may pass, and the
common carrier, railroad, or transportation company issuing any
such receipt or bill of lading shall be entitled to recover, in a
proper action, the amount of any loss, damage or injury it may be
required to pay to the owner of such property from the common
carrier, railroad, or transportation company through whose
negligence the loss, damage or injury may be sustained."
While this statute was in force, the defendants in error shipped
from Stoutsville, in the State of Missouri, on the line of the
Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, to Chicago, Illinois, which
was beyond the line of that road, ninety-nine head of cattle. At
the time of the shipment, a bill of lading was delivered to the
shippers. The portions of the contract pertinent to the questions
here arising for consideration are as follows:
"This agreement, made between George A. Eddy and H. C. Cross,
receivers of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, parties of the
first part, and M. B. Smizer, party of the second part, witnesseth
that whereas the receivers of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas
Railway transport the livestock as per above rules and regulations,
and which are hereby made a part of this contract, by mutual
agreement between the parties hereto, now therefore, for the
consideration and mutual covenants and conditions herein contained,
said party of the first part is to transport for the second party
the livestock described below, and the parties in charge thereof,
as hereinafter provided, namely, six cars, said to contain 95 head
of cattle, m. or l.o.r., from Stoutsville
Page 174 U. S. 582
Station, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois, station, consigned to
Brown Bros. & Smith, care Union Stock Yards at Chicago,
Illinois, at the through rate of 17 1/2 c. per hundred pounds from
Stoutsville, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois, subject to minimum
weights applying to cars of various lengths as per tariff rules in
effect on the day of shipment, the same being a special rate, lower
than the regular rates, or at a rate mutually agreed upon between
the parties, for and in consideration of which said second party
hereby covenants and agrees as follows:"
"1st. That he hereby releases the party of the first part from
the liability of common carrier in the transportation of said
stock, and agrees that such liability shall be that of a mere
forwarder or private carrier for hire. He also hereby agrees to
waive release, and does hereby release, said first party from any
and all liability for and on account of any delay in shipping said
stock, after the delivery thereof to its agent, and from any delay
in receiving same after being tendered to its agent."
"
* * * *"
"4th. That the said second party, for the consideration
aforesaid, hereby assumes and releases said first party from risk
of injury or loss which may be sustained by reason of any delay in
the transportation of said stock caused by any mob, strike,
threatened or actual violence to person or property from any
source, failure of machinery or cars, injury to track or yards,
storms, floods, escape or robbery of any stock, overloading cars,
fright of animals, or crowding one upon another, or any and all
other causes except the negligence of said first party, and said
negligence not to be assumed, but to be proved by the said party of
the second part."
"
* * * *"
"13th. And it is further stipulated and agreed between the
parties hereto that in case the livestock mentioned herein is to be
transported over the road or roads of any other railroad company,
the said party of the first part shall be released from liability
of every kind after said livestock shall have left its road, and
the party of the second part
Page 174 U. S. 583
hereby so expressly stipulates and agrees, the understanding of
both parties hereto being that the party of the first part shall
not be held or deemed liable for anything beyond the line of the
Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway excepting to protect the through
rate of freight named herein."
When this bill of lading was executed, an ancillary agreement
was indorsed thereon, as follows:
"We, the undersigned persons in charge of the livestock
mentioned in the within contract, in consideration of the free pass
furnished us by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway, Geo. A.
Eddy and H. C. Cross, receivers, and of the other covenants and
agreements contained in said contract, including rules and
regulations at the head thereof and those printed on the back
thereof, all of which for the consideration aforesaid are hereby
accepted by us and made a part of this contract, and of the terms
and conditions of which we hereby agree to observe and be severally
bound by, do hereby expressly agree that during the time we are in
charge of said stock, and while we are on our return passage, we
shall be deemed employees of said receivers of the Missouri, Kansas
and Texas Railway for the purposes of said contract stated, and
that we do agree to assume, and do hereby assume, all risks
incident to such employment, and that said receivers shall in no
case be liable to us for any injury or damages sustained by us
during such time for which it would not be liable to its regular
employees."
"[Signed]"
"J. O. Richart"
"M. B. Smizer"
The cattle were transported over the line of the Missouri,
Kansas & Texas Railway to Hannibal, Missouri, and from that
point the cars in which they were contained passed to the line of
the Wabash Railway, destined for Chicago. At or near Chicago, an
unreasonable delay was occasioned in the transportation of the
cattle by the negligence of employees of the Wabash Railway,
resulting in damage for which the shippers subsequently brought an
sanction against the receivers of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas
Railway to recover for the breach
Page 174 U. S. 584
of the contract of shipment. Judgment having been entered upon
the verdict of a jury in favor of the plaintiffs, an appeal was
prosecuted by the receivers to the supreme court of the state, and
was heard in division No. 2. There was a judgment reversing the
lower court, and a motion for a rehearing was denied. Between the
time of the decision of the supreme court and the overruling of the
motion for a rehearing, both the receivers had died, and the
railway company had resumed possession of its road. This fact
having been called to the attention of the supreme court, the
railway company was substituted as appellant, instead of the
receivers, and a rehearing was ordered. The case was transferred to
the court in banc, and was argued before that tribunal. Thereafter
a decision was rendered affirming the judgment of the trial court,
and motion for a rehearing was denied. 133 Mo. 59. The case was
then brought by writ of error to this Court.
By the assignments of error it is asserted, and in the argument
at bar it has been strenuously urged, that the Missouri statute
above quoted is in conflict with the Constitution of the United
States because it is a regulation of commerce between the states,
and that the Supreme Court of Missouri hence erred in giving effect
to the statute in the decision by it rendered. The statute, as
interpreted by the supreme court, is asserted to operate to deprive
the railway of the power of making a through shipment of interstate
commerce business over connecting lines without becoming liable for
the negligence of the connecting carriers. In other words, the
argument is that the effect of the Missouri statute, as interpreted
by the highest court of that state, is to deprive a railway company
transacting the business of interstate commerce of all power to
limit its liability to its own line, and hence compels it, if
interstate commerce is engaged in or a through bill of lading for
such traffic is issued, to become responsible for the articles
carried throughout the entire route, thereby entailing upon the
carrier receiving the goods the risk of negligence by other
carriers along the line, even although such lines are situated
beyond the state in which the contract was made or the business
originated. This, it is insisted, is a direct
Page 174 U. S. 585
burden imposed by the state upon interstate commerce, since it
forbids a carrier from engaging in that commerce unless it subjects
itself to a liability for the faults of others, against which it
cannot guard and for which it was not previously liable, and,
moreover, by necessary effect, punishes the carrier for issuing a
through bill of lading for interstate commerce, thereby tending to
discourage the through transportation of merchandise from state to
state, and having a direct and inevitable tendency to defeat the
portion of the provisions of the sixth section of the Act to
Regulate Commerce, as amended March 2, 1889, c. 382, 25 Stat. 855,
referring to the subject of joint rate of tariffs over continuous
roads of different carriers, and the seventh section of the
original act, approved February 4, 1887, c. 104, 24 Stat. 382,
which was designed to cause the carriage of freight to be
continuous from the place of shipment to the place of
destination.
The contention advanced in these several propositions is,
however, without foundation, from the fact that it proceeds upon an
erroneous assumption of the purport of the Missouri statute in
question, since the Supreme Court of Missouri, in applying that
statute in the case before us, has in the most positive terms
declared that it was not intended to, and did not, prevent a
carrier engaged in interstate commerce traffic from limiting his
liability to his own line, and that, far from doing this, the
statute left the carrier the amplest power to make such limitation
in receiving goods for interstate carriage and in issuing a through
bill of lading therefor. In commenting on the statute, the court
said:
"The provision of the statute is that 'wherever property is
received by a common carrier to be transferred from one place to
another.' This language does not restrict, but rather recognizes,
the right of the carrier to limit its contract of carriage to the
end of its own route, and there deliver the property to the
connecting carrier."
"There can be no doubt, then, that under the statute as well as
under the English law, the carrier can, by contract, limit its duty
and obligation to carriage over its own route."
Again, in summing up its conclusions, the court said:
Page 174 U. S. 586
"We are unable to see, as contended by defendant, that the
construction we give this statute makes it repugnant to the
provisions of the Constitution of the United States, which gives to
congress alone the power to regulate commerce among the
states."
"The act in no way operates as a regulation of trade and
business among the states. No burden or restriction on
transportation is imposed. Carriers are left free to make their own
contracts in regard to compensation for their services for
transportation between the states, subject to congressional
regulations."
The reasoning now relied on, then, is that although the Supreme
Court of the State of Missouri has interpreted the statute of that
state as not depriving a carrier of power, on receiving an
interstate shipment, to limit its liability to its own line, this
Court should disregard the interpretation given to the state
statute by the court of last resort of the state, and hold that the
statute means the very contrary of its import as declared by the
supreme court of the state, and upon such construction decide that
the state law is repugnant to the Constitution of the United
States. But the elementary rule is that this Court accepts the
interpretation of the statute of a state affixed to it by the court
of last resort thereof.
Sioux City Trust Company v. Trust
Company, 172 U.S. 642, and authorities there cited.
It is urged, however, that even although it be conceded that the
Supreme Court of Missouri has interpreted the statute in question,
in an abstract sense, as not depriving a railway company of the
power to limit its liability to its own line when receiving goods
for interstate shipment, the court has nevertheless given the
statute practical enforcement as if it meant exactly the contrary
of the interpretation affixed to it. In other words, the
proposition is, although the Supreme Court of Missouri has declared
that the statute did not deprive a carrier of its right to limit
its liability to its own line, yet it has, as a necessary
consequence of its application of the statute to the bill of lading
in controversy in this cause, given to the statute the very meaning
which it expressly declared it
Page 174 U. S. 587
had not. An examination, however, of the opinion of the Supreme
Court of Missouri demonstrates that it is not justly susceptible of
the construction thus placed upon it. Analyzing the opinion of the
court, it results that the court decided that while the statute
left a railway company ample power to restrict its liability by
contract, both as to carriage and as to liability for negligence,
to its own line, the purpose embodied in the statute was to
regulate the form in which the contract should be expressed, so as
to require the carrier to embody the limitation directly and in
unambiguous terms in the portion of the agreement reciting the
contract to transport, and not to import or imply such limitation
by way of exception or statements of conditions and qualifications,
requiring on the part of the shipper a critical comparison of
clauses of the contract in order to reach a proper understanding of
its meaning. That is to say that the restraint imposed by the
statute was not a curtailment of the power to limit liability to
the line of the carrier accepting the freight, but a regulation of
the form in which the contract having that object in view should be
drawn.
Considering the statute as thus interpreted by the Supreme Court
of the State of Missouri, it cannot be held to be repugnant to the
Constitution of the United States. The subject of the power of the
states to legislate as to the mere form of contracts for interstate
commerce carriage was fully considered in
Richmond &
Alleghany Railroad Patterson Tobacco Co., 169 U.
S. 311. In that case, the Court said (p.
169 U. S.
314):
"The distinction between a law which forbids a contract to be
made and one which simply requires the contract, when made, to be
embodied in a particular form is as obvious as is the difference
between the sum of the obligations of a contract and the mere
instrument by which their existence may be manifested. The contract
is the concrete result of the meeting of the minds of the
contracting parties. The evidence thereof is but the instrument by
which the fact that the will of the parties did meet is shown."
"
* * * *"
"Of course, in a latitudinarian sense, any restriction as to
the
Page 174 U. S. 588
evidence of a contract relating to interstate commerce may be
said to be a limitation on the contract itself. But this remote
effect, resulting from the lawful exercise by a state of its power
to determine the form in which contracts may be proved, does not
amount to a regulation of interstate commerce. The principle on
this subject has been often stated by this Court, and indeed has
been quite recently so fully reviewed and applied, that further
elaboration becomes unnecessary."
But it is pressed that, conceding the statute to have the
purport given it by the Missouri court, nevertheless it does not
come within the rule announced in the case just referred to because
the requirement of the Missouri statute, as interpreted, is so
unreasonable as to amount in substance to a denial of the right of
a carrier to confine by contract his duty of carriage and his
liability for negligence to his own line. If the regulation of the
statute be equivalent to a denial of the right to so limit, this
Court, it is asserted, must consider its substantial results, and
not its mere theoretical significance. This contention, however, is
also without a solid basis to rest upon. The requirement as to form
held to be valid in
Richmond & Alleghany Railroad v.
Patterson Tobacco Co., supra, was that every contract
confining the liability upon an interstate shipment to the line of
the receiving carrier should be signed by the shipper or be
invalid. The manifest intent of such a regulation was to protect
the shipper by having it clearly manifested by his signature that
his attention had been directed to the contract limitation of
liability, so that no question might arise of inadvertence on his
part in delivering the merchandise and accepting the contract for
its carriage, which is usually prepared by the railroad company
receiving goods for transportation. While differing in form of
requirement, the exaction that the carrier, in unambiguous terms,
in the portion of the contract acknowledging the receipt of the
goods and expressing the obligation to transport, should state the
limitation of his obligation as a carrier to his own line, but
effectuates the purpose designed by the Virginia statute, which was
upheld in the
Patterson case.
If the bill of lading in the case before us did not contain
a
Page 174 U. S. 589
positive statement of an obligation by the receiving carrier to
transport from the point of shipment to the ultimate destination of
the cattle, of course, it would not come under the control of the
statute. But as, on the contrary, the contract contains an
expression of such obligation, limited by reference solely to
subsequent conditions inserted in the bill of lading, it is plainly
brought within the import of the statute as interpreted by the
Missouri court. It would have been within the power of the
receivers of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway to have
stipulated that the goods were received, to be transported by them
from Stoutsville to the termination of the line of railway operated
by the receivers, and there to be delivered to a connecting
carrier, who was to complete the transportation. It this had been
done, the bill of lading would have had the plain import which the
statute requires, nothing would have been left for construction,
and the contract would have conveyed its obvious significance to
the shipper who accepted it from the carrier. Because, instead of
doing this, the carrier chose, in the body of the bill of lading,
to stipulate that they were
"to transport for the second party the livestock described
below, and the parties in charge thereof, as hereinafter provided,
namely, six cars, said to contain 95 head of cattle, m. or l.o.r.,
from Stoutsville station, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois, station,
consigned to Brown Bros. & Smith, care Union Stock Yards at
Chicago, Illinois at the through rate of 17 1/2 c. per hundred
pounds from Stoutsville, Missouri, to Chicago, Illinois,"
thus carving out the limitation with respect to carriage, if
any, by reference to subsequent conditions, it cannot be reasonably
complained that the contract is governed by the statute. The
ancillary agreement which was endorsed on the bill of lading, it is
to be noted, adds cogency to this view, since it declares that
during the whole length of the transit, the parties who were to be
in charge of the cattle should be deemed employees of the receivers
of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, the initial carrier,
and that they should have no right to recover in the event of an
injury or damage sustained for which the receivers would not be
liable to their regular employees.
Page 174 U. S. 590
To assert that because there is a liability arising from the
application of the statute to the bill of lading which would not
result from the bill of lading itself, therefore the statute must
necessarily have been held to impose on the carrier a liability for
an interstate shipment beyond its own line is without merit. True,
if there had been no statute regulating the form of the bill of
lading, and we were called upon to construe the instrument, we
might consider that the limitations referred to in the contract
restricted the liability of the carrier to his own line. This
result, however, is rendered impossible in view of the statute not
because from its provisions a liability is imposed, but because of
the failure of the contract to conform to the requisites of the
statute. Such was the exact condition in the
Patterson
case,
supra, for it cannot be doubted that if, in that
case, there had been no statute requiring the signature of the
shipper to a contract limiting liability, a contract not signed by
the shipper containing an exemption would have been efficacious.
But as the statute required the signature, the contract, unsigned
by the shipper, was ineffective to relieve the carrier from a
liability stipulated against, it is true, but which was inoperative
because not expressed in legal form. Such is in substance the
situation here presented.
Judgment affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN dissented.