CASE OF HORSE LEFT IN SIDING. 245 



at the Windsor station, but the parties stated there was no horse at the 

 station, and that none had been sent there. The plaintiff persisted 

 that the horse was there, and it was at length discovered on a siding 

 in the horse-box in which it had come from Newbury, tied up by the 

 head for nearly 24 hours, without food or water, and exposed in au 

 elevated situation to a cold north wind. Johnson had signed the fol- 

 lowing document : 



'^ Mr. Wise: paid for one Jiorse 125. 6f?.; 9| train Newlury to Wind- 

 sor. Notice: The directors will not lie answerable for damage done to any 

 horses conveyed by this railway. — / ayrce to abide by the above notice. 



" W. S. Johnson." 



The plaintiif lived three-quarters of a mile from the station at Windsor. 

 Sometimes the company sent up horses to his stables, but no regular 

 course of dealing was proved. If a horse was sent, the plaintiff paid 

 the man for bringing it, but in general he sent to the station for his 

 own horses. Pollock C.B. directed the jury to find a verdict for the 

 defendants, reserving leave to the plaintiff to move to enter a verdict 

 for £20, the Court to be at liberty to amend the pleadings in any way 

 which might be necessary to raise this question. The Court confirmed 

 the ruling, and Pollock C.B. said : " There can be no doubt whatever 

 that the person who hired the horse was himself the real cause of all 

 the mischief. The railway company may to a certain extent have been 

 blameable ; but the person who produced the mischief was the sender 

 of the horse, who sent it without having forwarded any letter to inform 

 the plaintiff that it was coming, and without any groom or person to 

 attend it on its journey. One of the witnesses stated that it was the 

 usual and proper course for an intimation to be sent, and for somebody 

 to come and meet horses sent by train, at the end of the journey. If 

 that had. been done, the horse would have been taken care of, and no 

 mischief would have happened. This action appears to us an attempt 

 to throw upon the railway company, who are certainly not free from 

 blame, the responsibility for an injury which in reality was occasioned 

 by the person who sent the horse ; but we think that the mischief was 

 covered by the terms of the note in writing, and that the horse having 

 been accepted under a special contract, by which the railway company 

 were not to be liable for any damage which might be done to it, that 

 any injury which might happen to it, while remaining at the station 

 till somebody came and made au application for it, must be considered 

 as part of the risk of sending it from one place to another." The 

 rule was therefore discharged. 



The following were the principal features of Pardinyton v. The South 



