RELATING TO

GOODS AND PASSENGER TRAFFIC

ON

RAILWAYS, CANALS, AND STEAM SHIPS,

WITH CASES.

BY

E. B. IVATTS,

GOODS MANAGer, Midland GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.

(Late of Great Indian Peninsular-L. & N. W.-West Mid.-Buffalo & L. H., and
L. & Y. Railways.)

PUBLISHED BY M'CORQUODALE & CO., LIMITED,
55, CARDINGTON STREET, EUSTON SQUARE, N.W.;

ST. THOMAS ST., 8.E.; AND CHANGE ALLEY, E.C.;
AND AT NEWTON.LE.WILLOWS, LEEDS, AND GLASGOW.

1883

DEDICATED

то

SIR RALPH S. CUSACK, D.L.,

THE RESPECTED

CHAIRMAN

OF THE

MIDLAND GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY

OF IRELAND.

PREFACE.

FIVE years since I took upon myself the task of compiling a work on legal decisions in the higher Courts of Justice in respect to Railway Traffic, and the following pages are the result. The spare time of a railway official available for literary pursuits is very limited, and this, together with the difficulty in getting access to the records of the trials, explains the length of time occupied in this work.

I am led to consider such a book as this necessary from the difficulty I have always experienced in obtaining information on Carriers' Law from ordinary law books written by barristers, and other railway officials will probably have experienced a similar difficulty. In such text-books one can seldom find the required information on the particular point that may be at issue. This may arise from barristers writing books technically obscure to the possible litigant who may be able to pay for an opinion, or it may arise from the technicalities of a carrier's business being too obscure for barristers to eliminate from the trials the essential points upon which a carrier requires information. It is likely that both these causes may have contributed to render barristers' books unsuited as legal guides to common carriers. Furthermore, barristers' books are commentaries on legal decisions, whereas a carrier wants the actual case as unfolded at the trial; that is to say, the facts stripped of legal technicalities, with the material part of the Judge's decision added thereto. This is exactly what has been attempted in the following pages. In fact, I have taken the law, as unfolded by the Judges, and classified and fitted it into the railway frame ready for easy reference. In the main I have abstained from being a commentator, preferring rather to collate the words of the Judges and apply them directly to the sections of the business to which they relate.

The annoyance the reader is subjected to when consulting an ordinary book on Carriers' Law consists in having to read the notes on each page referring him to other parallel cases, but which other