Stephen Johnson Field

“ Although a railroad company is not a common carrier of live animals in the same sense that it is a carrier of goods, its responsibilities being in many respects different, yet when it undertakes generally to carry such freight it assumes, under similar conditions, the same obligations, so far as the route is concerned over which the freight is to be carried. ”

“ The doctrine invoked by the plaintiff's counsel against the limitation by contract of the common-law responsibility of carriers, has no application. There is, as already stated, no common-law responsibility devolving upon any carrier to transport goods over other than its own lines, and the laws of Illinois restricting the right to limit such responsibility do not, therefore, touch the case. Nor was the common-law liability of the defendant corporation enlarged by the fact that a notice of the charges for through transportation was posted in the defendant's station-house at Chicago. ”

“ That each road, confining itself to its common-law liability, is only bound, in the absence of a special contract, to safely carry over its own route and safely to deliver to the next connecting carrier, but that any one of the companies may agree that over the whole route its liability shall extend. ”