232 



LIVEEY-STABLE KEEPERS, AGISTEES, ETC. 



Selecting a 



particular 



carriaije. 



to travel in ; but, in my opinion, he is bound to take as 

 much care as they ; and although not an insurer^ against 

 all defects, he is an insurer against all defects which care 

 and skill can guard against. His duty appears to me to be 

 to supply a carriage as fit for the purpose for which it is 

 hired as care and skill can render it ; and if whilst the 

 carriage is being properly used for such purpose it breaks 

 down, it becomes incumbent on the person who has let it out 

 to show that the breakdown was in the proper sense of the 

 word an accident, and not preventible by any care or skill. 

 If he can prove this, as the defendant did in Christie v. 

 Griggs {u), and as the railway company did in Readhead v. 

 Midland Rail. Co. (v), he will not be liable ; but no proof 

 short of this will exonerate him. Nor does it appear to 

 me to be at all unreasonable to exact such vigilance from a 

 person who makes it his business to let out carriages for 

 hire. As between him and the hirer the risk of defects in 

 the carriage, so far as skill and care can avoid them, ought 

 to be thrown on the owner of the carriage. The hirer 

 trusts him to supply a fit and proper carriage ; the lender 

 has it in his power not only to see that it is in a proper 

 state, and to keep it so, and thus to protect himself from 

 risk, but also to charge his customers enough to cover his 

 expenses. 



" Such being, in my opinion, the law applicable to the 

 case, it follows that the direction given to the jury did not 

 go far enough, and that it was not sufficient, in order to 

 exonerate the defendant from liability, for him to prove 

 that he did not know of any defect in the bolt, had no 

 reason to suppose it was weak, and could not see that it 

 was by an ordinary inspection of the carriage. It further 

 follows that, in my opinion, the evidence was not such as 

 to warrant the finding that the carriage was in a fit and 

 proper state when it left the defendant's yard." And 

 Mathew, J., coming to the same conclusion, a new trial was 

 ordered accordingly. 



A person who, on hiring a carriage, looks at it merely to 

 test its capacity to hold a certain number of persons, does 

 not by so doing, select it so as thereby to relieve the party 

 letting it to hire from liability with respect to its safety (w). 

 The question whether the owner would be relieved from 



(») 2 Camp. FO; 11 E. E. 666. 

 (v) L. E., 2Q. B. 412; 36 L. J., 

 Q. B. 181. 



(t») Jones X. J?age, 15 L. T., N. S. 

 619. 



