Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The rule is a novel and cunning device to defeat the normal liability of carriers and should not be made a favorite of the courts.
Believing, as I do, for the reasons thus stated, that the thirty-day notice really is much more unjust when applied to passenger than to property claims and also because its application will work as grave discrimination and injustice in other cases as it so palpably does in this case, I think the rule of public policy declared in the Cummins Amendment should be followed and that the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals should be reversed. ”

“ With all deference, I submit that the reason thus given is unsound, because the likelihood is much greater that fraudulent claims will be made for injuries to goods than to persons, for the reason that most goods are packed for shipment and whether they are damaged or not cannot be discovered until they are unpacked after having left the custody of the carrier, but it must be rare indeed that a passenger can be injured except in the presence of some one or more of the carrier's agents. ”

“ Persons and property are usually transported so safely by rail that though of damage rarely enters the mind of the occasional shipper or traveler, and from this it results that rules, such as we have here, are not read, or, if read, are not understood, couched, as they usually are, in forms of expression about the meaning of which courts are in constant disagreement, with the result that while the large shippers know of and keep within such rules and recover their losses, for the occasional small shippers they serve as a trap in which, they are often caught and ruined. ”