Ferraris v. Southern Pacific Co.

[561]

SHAW, J.

Action to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff on account of defendants’ negligence in transporting a car of bananas from New Orleans to Los Angeles. Judgment went for plaintiff, from which defendants appeal, claiming the evidence is insufficient to justify the finding of the court to the effect that the deterioration of the fruit, delivered to defendants at New Orleans in good condition, was due to the failure of defendants to keep the same under proper refrigeration.

[1]

Testimony received on the part of plaintiff was to the effect that in shipping bananas in carload lots it is necessary to place them in charge of a messenger, as was done in this instance, whose duty it is to maintain a temperature inside the car of fifty-eight or sixty degrees, which is done by the opening and closing of plugs and vents, depending upon the outside temperature, which varies along the route of travel. The testimony also tends to show that the messenger in charge of the car properly looked after the ventilation thereof, which arrived in Los Angeles at 8:20 P. M., December 13, 1917, with the fruit in good condition; that the damage to the bananas occurred between the time of arrival on December 13th and 8:30 A. M., December 14th, and was caused by the fact that, due to defendants’ negligence, one doo.r of the car had during the night been opened and left in that condition, as a result of which the fruit was badly chilled and spoiled. As against this evidence, which, if true, was ample to justify the finding, defendants introduced a report made by the messenger in charge as to the degrees of temperature through which the fruit was transported from New Orleans to Los Angeles, and which, it is claimed, shows the inaccuracy of his testimony. From this report it appears that the outside temperature along the route of travel varied from twenty degrees to sixty-eight degrees above zero, and that the inside temperature, so far as shown by the report, was not less than fifty-four degrees above zero, and the difference between the outside and inside temperature, so far as shown by this report, and in the absence of a stove or other means of heating, varied from four degrees to eighteen degrees; for instance, at one point when the outside temperature was sixty degrees, it was sixty-four degrees inside, and at another point, when the outside temperature was thirty-six de