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caused by the negligence of someone for 
whom they were responsible, but relied on 
the special contract which had been signed 
on behalf of the plaintiff, among the con- 
ditions of which was the following: ‘‘ The 
company will not in any case be responsible 
beyond the following sums: dogs, deer or 
goats, {2 each, unless a higher value be 
declared at the time of delivery to the 
company, and a percentage of I} per cent. 
(minimum 3d.) paid upon the excess of the 
value so declared.” 
The value of the dog being agreed, the 
only question in the case was whether or 
not this special contract was in its terms 
just and reasonable within the meaning of 
Section 7 of the Railway and Canal Traffic 
Act, 1854. 
The dog was sent from Neath to Chester- 
field, the ordinary rate of 4s. being paid, 
and no declaration of its value was made 
by the sender. The railway company con- 
tended they were only liable for £2, and 
paid that amount into court. The plaintiff 
contendedthat the contract was unreasonable, 
and in proof of this pointed out that I} per 
cent. on the value would make the rate come 
to £3 15s. for the journey, which was out 
of all proportion to the risk, that it would 
amount to five times as much as a third 
class passenger would have to pay for the 
same distance, his fare being admitted to 
be 15s. 6d., and also that it would not 
be reasonable to seek to impose one rate 
applicable irrespective altogether of distance. 
The defendants called evidence to show that 
the special rate of 1} per cent. was the usual 
charge made by all railway companies, and 
that there was extra risk in the carriage of 
dogs, and contended that the special con- 
tract was just and reasonable, that the 
argument of the~ plaintiff, based upon a 
comparison of the rate charged for a passenger 
and that for a dog, was fallacious, inasmuch 
as tne risk in the case of a passenger was 
infinitesimal, whereas it was very appreciable 
in the case of a dog, and that for the extra 
risk the company were entitled to impose an 
extra rate, and the suggested rate was fair 
and the one commonly 
J 
and reasonable, 
made. 
BOOK 
OF Tile iets 
The learned judge in giving a reserved 
judgment went fully into the law on the 
subject, saying that the case was in principle 
on all fours with Dickson v. Great Northern 
Railway, decided in the Court of Appeal, and 
agreed with the judgment of Lord Lindley 
in that case, wherein he held “that the 
burden of proving a contract of this sort 
to be reasonable is thrown by the statute on 
the defendants.” Mr. Justice Walton said: 
To give evidence of the reasonableness of 
this contract might present some difficulty, 
but the burden of proof was on the company. 
There was another thing, in considering 
whether a condition like this was reasonable, 
he might—as appeared from the judgment 
in Dickson v. Great Northern Railway— 
rightly look not merely at the particular 
journey which this dog made, but also with 
reference to the question as to whether it 
was reasonable, having regard to the public 
generally. He must look, as it were, at an 
average journey. That being so, what was 
the evidence? There was evidence that 
the carriage of dogs by railways was attended 
by considerable risk of loss arising mainly 
from the fact that they were trying to 
escape all the time, often in most extra- 
ordinary ways. One of the witnesses for 
the railway company had said, in comparing 
the risk of carrying passengers with that of 
carrying dogs, that it was as a million to one. 
That was rather poetical or metaphorical 
language, and did not pretend to be in any 
way statistical, and only established that 
the risk in the case of a dog was much greater 
than in that of a passenger. That kind of 
evidence did not assist him very much, and 
still left the question whether this charge 
was a reasonable one to protect the company 
from the risk of liability for loss. He had to 
decide whether this was a reasonable premium 
to attempt to impose for this risk. It was 
idle, he thought, to compare fares for passen- 
gers with those for dogs as had been done in 
argument. He could take as an illustration 
an ordinary journey by a dog, of, say, forty 
miles. The charge would be ts., and would 
include the hability of the company up to £2. 
Suppose, then, that the owner declared excess 
value to the amount of £2, he would have to 
