LIABILITY Of HARBOR BOARDS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 225, 1 October 1901, Page 4

LIABILITY Of HARBOR BOARDS.

Du no din.. September

Mr -Justice Williams delivered an im-port-lilt judgment to-day. finding in favor of Lyseght and others versus tlie Otago Harbor Board for the amount claimed. £-250. for negligence in permitting galvanised iron landed oil lUinedin wharf, ex Mauiari. to become wet. His Honor, in the course of his judgment, said : —The ; question is whether at the time the iron was wetted it was in custody of the Hoard as a bailee for reward. If it was, then the Board is responsible for tiu* damage, because if the Hoard undertakes the duties of a bailee for reward, and a fortiori if the Board compels consignees to employ it as such bailee, the Board is bound to provide the appliances and labor which will enable it to keep safely the goods entrusted to it. The Board failed to Jo this. On the other hand, although the goods certainly were received in the tirst instance by the Board as a bailee for reward, yet if it had done all that it had to do, and if the consignee chose to leave the goods on the wharf after the time arrived at which he ought to have taken them away, the Board would not be responsible. In such a case the by laws relieve the Board from responsibility, but apart from any by laws, the utmost the Board could be called upon to do with respect to goods so left would be to protect them as best it- could with the appliances at its disposal. This was done- in the present case. Had then, before the iron was wetted, the time arrived at which it had become the duty of the consignee to have taken delivery of the iron from the Board '? If the Board elects to tal.'o delivery of goods from a ship, and to deliver them to consignees, then as the consignees admittedly cannot be expected to take them immediately they are placed on the wharf, it follows that the consignees must have a reasonable time allowed to take them, and that during such time the goods would be in the custody of the Board, as a bailee for reward. " Reasonable time ” must be •• reasonable " from a business point of view, and reasonableness must be determined in each case by circumstances which exist when particular goods are being discharged, and which are known to exist both by the Board and consignee. The Board, by by-law 215. and by its practice, has considered that in ordinary circumstances twenty-four hours would be a reasonable time ; but that cannot be always the case. The Board may receive goods late on a Saturday afternoon. It would be altogether unreasonable to expect a consignee to start to take them before working hours on Monday morning at the earliest. So in the ease of the discharge of a large English steamer like the Mamari, Mr ltawson admits that it would have taken a week to get all the cargo off the wharf. In the present ease thirty-two cases of iron were discharged on Wednesday, the ■ Till of November, lob on Thursday, the Bth, 286 on Friday, the 9th, and 199 on Saturday, the 10th. By by-law XU7 ordinary business hours upon the wharf are to be from 8 a.m. to 5 pun., Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays excepted, and on Saturday from S a.m. to 1 p.m. By-law 299 prescribes that certain days shall be observed as holidays, and amongst them the Prince of Wales' (King's) Birthday, the 9th of November. If a consignee chooses to arrange with the Board that he will take delivery of his goods on a holiday or out of ordinary business hours there is nothing to prevent such an arrangement. In the absence of any arrangement, and in face of the Board’s own bye-laws, it would bo unreasonable tc expect a consignee to take delivery at these time s. Here, admittedly, Mr Hogg never consented to take delivery on Frida) or on Saturday afternoon. If holidays intervene and there is a risk of perishable goods being injured by exposure on the wharf, the wharfinger can refuse to allow them to be landed. Looking at the whole of the circumstances in the evidence, and more particularly at the fact that Friday was a holiday, I do not think that Mr Hogg was in default in not having taken delivery of the iron that was damaged before midday on Saturday, when it suffered injury. It might be said that by that time ho should have at an) rate received some portion of the iron notwithstanding the Friday holiday, but I think that it is pretty clear that the first iron which came out, and which in the ordinary course should have been removed first, was that which had been best protected, and which was taken by Thomson Bridget'. As to the great bulk of the iron, and as to the iron which was damaged, I do not think that the consignee was in default in not having removed it before the time at which the rain came which caused the injury. For the above reasons I think the Board is liable.