The cloak-room.—For a long time there had been a general impression that, as a general rule, any luggage deposited in a cloak-room involved the company with only the limited liability of warehousemen. But the decision in Singer Manyfacturing Co. v. L. and S.-W. Ry. Co. has now made it clear that the real liability of the railway company is that of common carriers. " Having re gard to modern decisions and the rising standard of convenience to which railway companies are obliged to conform," said Mr. Justice IIenn-Collins in that case, " the cloak-room is now to be regarded simply as one of the necessary and reasonable facilities incident to the carriage of passengers and their baggage." It is usual, however, for companies to acknowledge deposits by receipts therefor which contain conditions very materially modifying their liability. A passenger who lodges his luggage in a cloak-room should therefore notice these conditions, for he will usually be bound by them except so far as he objects at the time.
Left on the platform.—A passenger has only himself to blame if he leaves his luggage unguarded on a platform, and subsequently finds that it has been lost or injured. But it may be a task of some difficulty to apportion the liability in a case where he leaves it on the platform in the charge of a porter. The question will be : did he so leave it mainly for safe custody, or did he hand it to the porter mainly for the purposes of its carriage. It is obvious that railway companies do not provide platforms and porters merely for the convenience of persons who only desire to temporarily deposit their goods for safe custody, and that to such persons they do not incur any liability greater than that of gratuitous bailees [see BAIL MENT] ; they certainly do not incur the extreme liability of common carriers. A case in which a railway company was held to incur the latter liability was that of Lovell v. L. C. and D. Ry. Co. There the plaintiff, having driven up to the railway station with her luggage in a cab, was met by a porter who took down the luggage, promised to carry it on to the platform and label it, and directed her to the ticket office. Having obtained the ticket she went on to the platform, found the porter, but only a part of the luggage. For the missing luggage she sued the company, and they were found liable on the ground that the luggage had been delivered to the porter, within the scope of his authority, for conveyance by them as common carriers. On the other hand, in Agrell v. L. and N.-W. Ry. Co., it was decided that the company had incurred no liability whatever. In that case an intending passenger from Manchester to Hull, having arrived at the former station, handed his luggage to a porter there to keep for him, and then went away. On his return he saw the luggage, but no porter, so he labelled it himself ; he went away again, and returning some time afterwards found the luggage had disappeared. But the company would no doubt have been liable for that missing luggage if its owner had only said "Bull " when handing it to the porter, and the latter had replied " All right." Such a conversation would have determined the nature of the deposit, and fixed the company with their usual carriers' liability.
Commencement of the liability.—The last noted cases, in addition to indicating the appropriate liability in respect of luggage left on platforms or in the charge of porters, show also the circumstances under which railway companies may first assume their full common carriers' liability. But the case of Bunch v. Ry. Co. should be specially referred to in this connection. There the company were held liable under the following circumstances. A lady arrived at Paddington Station with a bag, intending to travel by a train which did not start for about forty minutes after her arrival. Having given her bag to a porter, directed him to place it in a carriage for her, and received his assurance that she could safely leave it with him, she went to another part of the station premises and obtained a ticket. Upon her return, in about ten minutes, she discovered that the bag had never been put into a carriage and was missing. The law was thus summed up by Lord Watson :—" In the ordinary course of business, passengers' luggage is received at the entrance to the station by the servants of the company, and is by them conveyed either to the van or to the carriage in which he intends to travel. I do not mean to say that companies are under any statutory or other obligation to provide that accommodation, but they find it to their interest to do so; and in taking charge of luggage for these purposes, their servants act within the scope of their implied authority. Their duty is, according to prevailing usage, limited to the transport of passengers' luggage from the vehicle which brings it to the station to a train which is about to start, and does not extend to their taking charge of luggage which cannot, in any reasonable sense, be con sidered as in the actual course of transit. It may be that railway porters do sometimes undertake the charge of luggage which is merely intended for future transit ; when they do so, they exceed the limits of their implied authority, and in that case their possession cannot be regarded as the possession of their employers. If the respondents (Mr. and Mrs. Bunch) had gone to Paddington Station at noon of the 24th of December 1884, and had then left their Gladstone bag with a porter in order that it might accompany them on their journey to Bath by the 5 r.m. train, I should have had no hesitation in holding that the
appellant company had not become responsible for its safe custody during the interval. In that case it would have been in accordance with well-known practice, and therefore an implied term of the subsequent contract between the parties, that the company were not to be liable unless the luggage was duly deposited in the office provided for that purpose. On the other hand, if the respondents had arrived at the station at 4.55 P.M., I entertain as little doubt that the delivery of their Gladstone bag to a porter, for the purpose of its being conveyed to the carriage in which they were about to travel, would have made the possession of their porter that of the appellant company. Whether passengers' luggage delivered to a railway porter is in his possession for present or merely with a view to future transit, is necessarily a question of degree depending upon the circumstances of the case. Railway companies, as a matter of fact, frequently provide for the travelling public, not only booking offices, but refreshment-rooms and other conveniences ; and passengers who merely avail themselves of such accommodation as incidental to their use of the railway, cannot be held to have temporarily ceased to prosecute their journey. It is impossible to fix any precise limit of time prior to the starting of a particular train, within which the company are to be liable for passengers' luggage delivered to their servants for conveyance by it, and beyond which they are not liable. In my opinion the company are responsible for luggage delivered to and in the custody of their servants for the purpose of transit, whenever it can be reasonably predicated of the passenger to whom it belongs that he is actually prosecuting his journey by rail, and is not merely waiting in order to begin its prosecution at some future time." On other companies' lines.—When making any considerable journey a passenger, even though he books through by the company on whose line he started, has often, before he reaches his destination, to pass over at least one line belonging to another company. It may be that while so passing over another company's line, and whilst he and his luggage are under the care of that company's servants, his luggage is lost or injured. In such a case he has his remedy against either company. Against the original company, upon the contract he entered into with them ; against the other, in tort in respect of their negligence. And the original company—the one giving the ticket—is liable, even though an express condition is indorsed on the ticket that they will not be liable in respect of loss or injury "off their own line." But they will, under such a condition, escape liability where the matter complained of has occurred on the line of a company with which they have no sort of working agreement in respect of the particular journey (Kent v. M. Ry. Co.). Where a passenger took a ticket of the G.-W. Ry. for a journey over the line of the L. and N.-W. Ry., and lost his luggage on the latter line through its company's negligence, that company—the L. and N.-W. Ry.---were held liable therefor as for a breach of duty. Such was the decision in Hooper v. L. and N.-W. By. Co., based on the authority of Foulkes v. Met. By. Co., where it was said :—" The true principle is that the company, so far as concerns its own line, in which term they include a line over which running powers are exercised, and its own acts and means, is under the same obligations in reference to the security of the passenger as it would have been if it had directly contracted with him." Termination of liability.—The duty of the railway company is to deliver the luggage upon the platform of the station to which the passenger is booked. Having done this in such a manner as to give the passenger an 'opportunity to take possession, their liability as common carriers will cease and give place to a liability as warehousemen. It lies upon the passenger to take the initiative and claim his luggage and remove it (Patscheider v. G.-W. Ry. Co. ; Chapman v. G.-W. By. (Jo.). The position is well illustrated by Hodkin.son v. L. and N.-W. By. Co., which, in the words of Shirley's Leading Cases, the case of an unfortunate governess who lost her box. She arrived at a station of the defendants (Ashton under-Lyne), and one of the company's porters took her luggage from the van. Would she have a cab ?" No; she would walk, and send for her luggage.' 'All right, mum,' said the porter ; put them on one side, and take care of them.' The governess went off, and so did the luggage ; for two hours after wards, when the luggage was wanted, it could not be found. It was held that the company were not responsible for the loss. They had delivered the luggage in the proper way, and the woman's redelivery of it to the porter could not be taken to affect them." Bye-lams.—The bye-laws of a company with regard to their liability for passengers' luggage must be reasonable, in order to be valid and binding upon their passengers. A bye-law would not be reasonable if it limited the company's liability only to luggage which is fully and accurately addressed with the name and destination of the owner. Notwithstanding such a bye-law, the company would be liable for any loss of or injury to a passenger's luggage which had been merely labelled with its destination (Cutler v. N.-L. By. Co.).