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14 Wend. 225

De Mott v. Laraway

New York Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1835

New York Supreme Court · decided 1835-10-15

Error from the Seneca common pleas. Laraway sued De Mott & Ingersoll in a justice's court, to recover freight due to him as a common carrier. It was conceded that the amount was #39; but the defendants interposed as a defence the neglect of the plaintiff to deliver a hogshead of molasses, which he had received for transportation.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1835-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently December 1860

2 state decisions

101835184018501860decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1By the Court,

Sutherland, J.

¶2The court of common pleas erred in reversing the judgment of the justice. Laraway was a common carrier upon the canal, and as such undertook to transport the defendant’s goods from Troy to Kidder's ferry. This necessarily included the duty.of delivering the goods there in safety. They were all thus delivered except a hogshead of molasses, which was stove, in the act of being unladen; as they were hoisting it from the boat, with a tackle attached to a store house upon the bank of the canal, the rope broke, and the hogshead fell into the boat, and most of the molasses was lost. Although one of the defendants was present, there is no pretence that he had accepted the molasses as delivered, previously to the accident,or that he had any thing to do with the delivery. The delivery was not complete when the accident occurred, and the goods were still at the risk of the carrier. It is a matter of no importance that the machinery employed in unlading the boat was attached to and belonged to a store on the bank of the canal, and not to the carrier’s boat. It was pm hac vice his tackle, and he was responsible for its sufficiency. When the responsibility of a common carrier has begun, it continues until there has been a due delivery by him.. 4 Kent's Comm. 604. 4 T. R. 581. 5 id. 389.

¶3The objection of the defendant in error, that the claim of the defendants for the injury sustained by them, was not a proper subject of set-off, is disposed of by the stipulation of the parties that the whole matter should be submitted to the justice.

¶4Judgment reversed.

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