I also ran the risk of missing the connection at B.; but I remembered that once upon a time a tailor going down into the country to measure his customers, in consequence of the train not having reached a junction at the time advertised, missed his connection and had to spend the night at the junction and pay extra fare the next morning; he sued the company and recovered the amount of his hotel expenses and the extra fare, but not for damages sustained by not reaching his customers at the appointed time [but this rule seems to be almost equivalent to a denial of all beneficial redress in such cases.[295]] The chief baron in giving judgment, stated that as a rule, generally in actions upon contracts the plaintiff is entitled to recover whatever damage naturally results from the breach of the contract, but not damages for the disappointment of mind occasioned by the breach of contract.[296] When in consequence of the company’s negligence M. Le Blanche reached Leeds too late for the Scarborough train, and he took a special train whereby he reached Scarborough an hour earlier than if he had waited for the next regular train, the court considered that although he had no special business at S., yet still he was entitled to recover from the railroad authorities the cost of the special train. But a man should not take a special, hoping to have the expense recouped him, unless it is a reasonable thing to do under the circumstances.[297] In Manchester (England), a music teacher recovered against a railway company five shillings which he had had to pay for cab-hire, the train through delays having failed to make certain connections.[298] If a party bound to do a certain thing does not do so, the other party may do it for him as reasonably and nearly as may be, and charge him for the reasonable expenses incurred in doing so. A company cannot escape damages for its failure to carry a passenger with sufficient dispatch by the fact that the delay was the wilful act of the conductor in charge of the train.[299] It must clearly appear that the damages were sustained without any fault on the part of the traveller, and in spite of his utmost efforts to avoid them.[300]
The mere production of a ticket, however, is not sufficient evidence of a contract to carry a passenger to a certain place within a given time, as one Hurst discovered when he sued for various expenses and losses sustained through missing a certain train in consequence of delay in starting; the time-table must be produced to prove the contract.[301] And as I knew that to prove that the table was issued by authority I would have to show either that it was bought at one of the company’s stations, or at one of their recognized receiving offices, or that it was posted up in some office or place where the advertisements of the company were usually placed,[302] I started off on a tour of investigation to see if I could pick up the desired article, or evidence that would answer my purpose, keeping in mind how ill fared my friend, Mr. Welfare. He once innocently inquired of a railway porter when the train would be in, and being referred by the official to a time-table hanging upon the wall, he went to consult it; while doing so, down tumbled, through a hole in the roof, a heavy plank and a roll of zinc, and smote Mr. Welfare on the neck, doing him grievous bodily harm; glancing upwards, the poor stricken one beheld the legs of a man upon the roof. Yet for the damages done the company was held not liable, as for aught that my friend showed at the trial the man might have been the servant of a contractor employed to mend the roof, or the misfortune might have been the result of a pure accident.[303] So the sufferings of my friend served but to point a moral—Beware!—and to adorn a volume of reports.
But to return from this digression anent my friend, to the topic on which I was musing. Draper, C. J., in one case, held that a time-table could not be treated as a part of the contract, but amounted to a representation only; and that to recover damages one would have to show that he bought his ticket before the time specified for the train leaving, and not merely before the arrival of the train, for if that were after the time specified, the would-be passenger would know as well as the company that the time-table had been departed from.[304]
While I was thus deeply ruminating, an old friend appeared,—a Q. C., of high standing, at the bar of a neighboring city,—and we went outside to enjoy a chat and weed while waiting for the train. Seeing an elderly female turn up her nose as a whiff of smoke tickled her nostrils, as if it were in very deed a blast from the lower regions, as King James said it was, my friend remarked:—
“Did you see that decision of Dillon, C. J., where he held that a woman who found the waiting-room unfit for her occupation—tobacco and other impurities being offensive to her delicate nerves—and so attempted to enter the cars which had not as yet come up to the platform, and was injured by the giving way of the platform steps, was entitled to recover?”[305]
“No,” I replied.
“He ruled that it is the duty of railway passenger carriers to provide comfortable rooms for the accommodation of passengers while waiting at the stations, and to enforce such regulations in regard to smoking therein as to enable persons to occupy them in reasonable comfort.”
“A very good decision for the ladies and those who have to wait hour after hour in a dirty room for a train ages behind its time.”
“Still I think it is pushing the doctrine of the liability of companies rather far.”
“Yes,” I returned, “and rather in the teeth of the dictum of Mr. Justice Hannan, in Siner v. Great Western,[306] where he said he thought that juries took an exaggerated view of the duties of railway companies; that the companies have done so much for the comfort and convenience of travellers that it is now made the subject of complaint if the highest degree of luxurious care is not attained in all their arrangements.”