BALTIMORE ea 0. B. co. v. nwausr EXPRESS co. 35
The Court. That is all there is of it. It is not bound to advance
money to pay somebody else. It is the business of the shipper to
look out for that himself.
Mr. Maxwell. Then I understand the order will be that the appli-
cation for an injunction is refused, and the temporary order hereto- I
fore issued dissolved?
The Court. Certainly. As I have already said, the obligation of
one carrier to the other is not that the carrier receiving the goods is
bound to pay the advance charges. He may or may not, at his opé
tion. There may be reasons why he should pay for one and not for
the other, precisely the same as an individual might be willing to
accept an obligation as a matter of courtesy and not as a matter of
duty; and if the corporation chooses to say, "I will not advance your
charges for the purpose of transportation," it has a perfect right so
to do, and will not be held liable for the obligations, not only of itself,
but of all the corporations over whose lines goods are being shipped ,
indefinitely. For the outcome may be, while it may nominally ap-
pear that the goods are of great value, in reality they may be of no
worth. Then what? There is the ordinary C. O. D. transaction. It
has to go back, necessarily, seriatim, to collect from this, that, and
the other company all their respective charges, and there may be half
a dozen intervening roads before it reaches the end. Why is it bound
to carry that burden? It is not bound to do it. That is the view of
this court, and has been for 30 years, and I still adhere to it.
There is another proposition connected with this matter that I
may as well state. For illustration, a shipment is made by a rail-
road from Portland, Maine, to Denver, whereby there is a through
shipment without any agreement between the intervening roads.
The original shipper, to-wit, the Portland, Maine, road, may be re-
sponsible for the safe delivery at Denver; but suppose a road from
Kansas City to Denver is not a party to that agreement, is it to be
bound by the arrangement thus made? It is only bound as a com-
mon carrier from the time the shipment came to it, and not as to r
anything antecedent thereto. It is not responsible for what occurred,
theretofore, unless it is an express party to the contract. The appli-
cation for this injunction will therefore be denied.