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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Scottish Court of Session Decisions >> Archibald M'Ausland v William Dick. [1787] Hailes 1019 (6 February 1787)
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Cite as: [1787] Hailes 1019
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[1787] Hailes 1019
Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE, LORD HAILES.
Subject_2 NAUTĘ, CAUPONES, ET STABULARII.
Subject_3 The owners of stage coaches not answerable for the safe conveyance of money, unless where it has been delivered as such.
Date: Archibald M'Ausland
v.
William Dick
6 February 1787 Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy
[Faculty Collection, IX. 476; Dictionary, 9,246.]
Hailes. Whatever may be the determination in this cause, it will not form a precedent; for all keepers of stage coaches will instantly advertise that they will not be answerable for money or bank-notes. It is impossible to suppose that Dick, or any other coach-master, could have meant to convey for sixpence a sum of two hundred pounds, which could not have been conveyed by the waggon for less than four shillings. In the waggon there is a place appropriated for the securing of money and bank-notes, so that they cannot be pilfered, and they are safe, unless the waggon itself should be carried off or plundered. In the stage-coach there is nothing of that kind, and there is no occasion for it, because it is not understood that money or bank-notes are to be transmitted by such conveyance.
Monboddo. The Roman edict does not apply. The matter comes then to the practice of Scotland,—and the question is, Whether by it stage-coach hirers take in money as parcels? And this is denied.
Braxfield. Upon the very principle of the Roman edict, quod receperit salvum fore, the defender ought to be assoilyied, for he did not undertake the charge of any money: non recepit.
Justice-Clerk. When those public conveyers mean to take the charge of money, they exact a premium for the risk and the trouble.
President. It was wrong in the pursuer to conceal that there was money in the packet.
Hailes. It behoved him to conceal it; for, had he not done so, it would not have been conveyed by the stage-coach. The fact is, that, for the saving of three shillings and sixpence by a cheap conveyance, he has, according to his own account, lost two hundred pounds.
On the 6th February 1787, “The Lords assoilyied, and found expenses due.”
Act. Ch. Hope. Alt. J. M'Laurin. Reporter, Eskgrove.
The electronic version of the text was provided by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting