Patterson v. N. C. R. R.

Dick, J. The defendant, as a common carrier, received the goods of the plaintiff for transportation to Goldsboro’. As no special contract was made, hmiting the common law responsibility of common carriers, the defendant was liable for any loss or damage not occasioned by the act of God, or the public enemy. The goods were destroyed by soldiers under an order of an officer of the Oonfederate government. This can not be regarded as the act of a public enemy. The Confederate government at that time was well organized and in full operation, and, so far as its citizens were concerned, it was certainly a government ele facto, performing many of the duties, and exercising more than the ordinary powers of a government ele jure. Both the plaintiff and defendant were within the limits of that government, and recognized its control, and received its protection, and neither of them can properly say that any thing done by its author-its was the act of a public enemy. The defendant has no right to complain of the stringent rules of the common law in regard to common carriers; for the loss of the goods might have been prevented by the exercise of ordinary care. It was gross negligence in the defendant to leave a car loaded with leaking barrels of whiskey, for a day and night in a place where it was exposed, and in a condition calculated to invite the depredations of soldiers. Peb Oubiamc. Judgment affirmed.