150 CARRIAGE BY SEA BY SPECIAL CONTRACT. 



render the shipowner liable. (a) The arrival of the ship with- 

 out the horse would be 'priTiid facie evidence against the 

 shipowner. (6) 



Even though a shipowner is saved by express exemption in 

 a bill of lading, he is nevertheless bound to take all reasonable 

 care of horses entrusted to him ; and when they are damaged 

 by a cause for which he is not responsible, he is bound to 

 use all means to mitigate the consequences of any disaster 

 they may have met with.(c) Whether shij)owners can con- 

 tract themselves out of liability for loss due to their own 

 personal fault is not clear. (fZ) Attempts have been made to do 

 this, but their effect is not to render them the less liable, but 

 merely to shift the onus pi'ohandi on to the shipowners to 

 show that the loss did not happen through their fault. Various 

 other exemptions have been made in bills of lading regarding 

 other classes of goods which have been the subject of decision, 

 and these, in the absence of express rulings in horse cases, 

 in some measure indicate the lines upon which the exemp- 

 tions usually found in bills of lading of horses would in all 

 likelihood be construed. 



Thus, where goods were delivered in a damaged condition 

 the bill of lading containing a stipulation that the ship- 

 owners should not be answerable " for damage, leakage, 

 lighterage, breakage, corruption, &c.," the owner of the goods 

 (sugar) sued the shipowners for damages, and the jury 

 returned a special verdict that the sugar was damaged, but 

 that it had not been established by evidence what was the 

 cause of the damage. It was held that the verdict should 

 be entered for the shipowners, in respect that the only 

 damage found to be proved was damage for which the ship- 

 owners were by the terms of the contract exempted from 

 liability. Lord Justice-Clerk Inglis said: — "If we had had here 

 an ordinary bill of lading with the usual exceptions or with 



(a) Lord Halsbury in WaMin v. L. «0 5.-11'. Jii/. Co., 1SS6, 12 App. Ca. 41, 45. 



(6) The Xantho.% 1886, 2 T/ic Times' L.R. 704. 



(c) Notam v. Henderson, 1870, L.R. 5 Q.B. 34fi. 



((0 Abbot, 13th ed., pp. 477-8. Phillips v. Edwards, 1858, 3 H. and N. 813. 



