1862. DIMSDALE v. THE LONDON AND BRIGHTON don." The plaintiff, on the 18th of November, wrote to the company, demanding his portmanteau, and threatening legal proceedings unless he received it the next day. Further inquiries were then made, and it was at length discovered that the portmanteau had been duly sent up to London, and had been safely deposited in the parcel-office at London Bridge on the very day the lady came up to London. The parcel-office was close by the cloak-room, but it never occurred to the clerks in the latter office to search in the parcel-office. As soon as the portmanteau was found it was sent to the plaintiff, and he was required to pay 2s. 2d. for the dog, ls. for warehouse-room for the portmanteau, and 6d. for the carriage of it. The plaintiff refused to pay more than 2s. 2d., and made a formal tender of that amount; but the company's servants would not deliver up the portmanteau unless the plaintiff paid the full sum of 3s. 8d. claimed. The plaintiff then brought the present action, and when this was done, the company were willing to deliver up the portmanteau on the payment of 2s. 2d. for the dog, and to forego their demand of ls. for warehouse-room and 6d. for the carriage; but the plaintiff would not accept the portmanteau upon these terms, and required the company to pay the costs of the action which had been commenced, and, as the company would not do this, the action proceeded. The plaintiff now relied upon his demand made, and the company's neglect to deliver up the portmanteau on the 16th of November, when he sent for it. The writ was issued on the 22nd. The case for the defendants was, that there was no address on the portmanteau by which they could find the plaintiff, nor any on the card to which their attention was directed; but it ultimately turned out that the portmanteau had been all along in the parcel-office, where it might have been at once found if inquiries had been made there, whether by the plaintiff, or the defendants' servants. COCKBURN, C. J., in summing up the case to the jury, said this was a most vexatious action, and that the proper course would have been for the plaintiff to have paid the 3s. 8d., and brought an action in the County Court to recover back the excess; and he left it to the jury to say whether there had been any negligence on the part of the company's servants in not finding the portmanteau, when it was sent for by the plaintiff on the 16th November, and, if so, they must find a verdict for the plaintiff, telling them that the company were not bound to send on the article to the plaintiff's residence without being paid for it; nor liable for non-delivery of it, either to the clerk or at the residence, unless there were reasonable inquiries made after it on the part of the plaintiff, and reasonable information given to the company for finding it, and sending it to his address. With respect to the damages, his Lordship intimated that they ought to be but small, as the portmanteau was in Court, and was ready to be given up. The jury found for the plaintiff-damages 40s., Griffits applied for a certificate for costs, but His LORDSHIP refused the application. Griffits submitted he was entitled to a verdict for the value of the portmanteau (a), which had been valued at 251.; but, COCKBURN, C. J., said that was for the jury. (a) That is, on the count in trover. But no case had been made as one of conversion, nor any election intimated to have the value, and not the article, as in detinue, under C. L. P. Act. (b) COLERIDGE accordingly moved in M. T. but took nothing, the 1862. DIMSDALE V. THE LONDON AND BRIGHTON RAILWAY COMPANY. 1862. London Sittings. custom or spe- the shipowner is not bound to give notice to consignee of the arrival of ships; but the consignee is bound, within a reasonable time after the arrival, to be ready to remove and receive his goods, and in default of his so doing, the shipowner may HOULDER v. THE GENERAL STEAM NAVIGA- THIS was an action for non-delivery of goods. The declaration stated that the defendants were owners of the ship Wansbeck, lying at the port of Newcastle, and bound from that port to London, that the plaintiff caused to be delivered to the defendants certain goods, to be by them shipped and safely carried from Newcastle to London, and there to be delivered to the plaintiff, but that the defendants had wrongfully omitted and neglected to carry and deliver the said goods. There were also counts for the conversion and detention of the said goods. Pleas: 1. Not guilty. 2. That the goods were not delivered to them as al land them, and leged. demand wharfage or other proper charges for landing. 4. That at the time the goods were delivered to them, or at any other time there was not delivered to them any direction or address either in words or writing, whereby they knew the plaintiff's residence-saw the general address of London-and that they could not by any reasonable diligence discover the plaintiff's residence or abode, or any other address of the plaintiff. That the defendants carried the goods to London, and were always ready and willing to deliver them to the plaintiff on payment of the freight and charges thereon, and that they kept the goods on board ready to be so delivered for a reasonable time, but that the plaintiff was not ready during such time to accept and receive the same, and whereupon the defendants, after a reasonable time, caused the goods to be removed from the ship and placed upon the wharf, ready to be delivered on payment of reasonable charges. 5. That by a known usage of the Port of London, the goods were to be kept on board a reasonable time, and that if the consignee should not be ready to receive them 1862. HOULDER V. THE GENERAL in a reasonable time, they should be landed, and delivered on payment of reasonable charges. That the defendants carried the goods to London, and were there ready to deliver the same to the plaintiff, who was not ready to receive them, and that, according to the custom, they kept the NAVIGATION same for a reasonable time and then landed them, where they were ready to be delivered to the plaintiff on payment of reasonable charges. Issue. Huddleston and Macnamara for the plaintiff. Denman and Pollock for the defendants. On the 3rd December, 1861, the goods in question, consisting of twenty casks of manganese, were sent and delivered to the mate on board the vessel at Newcastle, with a shipping note in these terms:-" Please receive on board the General Steam Navigation Company's boat the following goods from E. W. Fernie: twenty casks, 1 to 20, marked E. W. F., to order of Mr. William Houlder ["Houlden" instead of "Houlder"], Victoria Wharf, Earl Street, Blackfriars, London," and a receipt was given. On the 4th December, the plaintiff had notice that the goods would be shipped on the 3rd by the company's steamer. They came by the steamer which left Newcastle at four o'clock on Wednesday morning, and the plaintiff knew that the boats ran from that port only twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday. The plaintiff had received goods before by the company's vessels, and had carried on business at Victoria Wharf since the end of 1860, but his name was not in the Directory. The predecessors of the plaintiff at Victoria Wharf had received notice of expected arrivals of goods by the defendant's steamer, but the plaintiff had not. On Thursday, the 6th of December, the steamer arrived in the Port of London, but the ship's manifest contained no address of the plaintiff. On the 7th, the defendants' COMPANY. 1862. HOULDER V. THE GENERAL STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY. agent in London received plaintiff's address, and sent the plaintiff notice that the goods had been landed, and were to be taken away in six days, or otherwise rent thereof would be charged from the time of landing; but on the evening of that day the goods were landed. Plaintiff having received notice late on the evening of the 10th, sent for the goods on the next day, but the defendants refused to deliver them, as they had been landed, unless he paid for wharfage. The freight was tendered and refused, and thereupon this action brought. On behalf of the plaintiff, it was contended that there was a custom by which the defendants' agent always gave to consignors notice of the expected arrival of goods, when they were sent for by lighter, and taken over the side without being landed. For the defendants, it was contended that there was no such custom, or, if any, that it certainly could not apply if there was, as here, an error in the name (it appeared that the plaintiff's name had been written "Houlden" instead of "Houlder), that the defendants' agent was sometimes in the habit of writing to apprise consignees of the expected arrival of goods, but that this was not an universal practice, and that he never sent notice of arrival until the goods were actually landed. The notices were usually made out from the manifest; and the shipping note in this case was not looked at until the 10th, and then he wrote to the plaintiff. There were the names of nearly seventy consignees on the manifest. The goods in question weighed about ten tons. And the evidence for the defendants was, that notices were usually sent to such consignees as would be expected to send lighters to receive their goods over the side of the steamer; and that their agent sent such notices to about twenty-three out of the seventy consignees, but that it was not usual to send such notices in cases of consignments of a few tons only. Denman, at the close of the case for the plaintiff, |