ITEMS OF INTEREST June 17, 1911 Issue

ITEMS OF INTEREST

The rule of a railroad limiting its liability to a certain stated sum where a passenger loses baggage carried on his ticket, has been upset by the appellate division of the New York supreme court. A complainant brought suit against a railroad for five hundred and fifty dollars, alleging that was the value of the contents of a trunk which he lost on one of the defendant's trains. The railroad set up a defense that it filed with the public service commission a tariff wherein it was stated that the railroad was responsible for one hundred and fifty dollars only on baggage carried without charge. On demurrer to the contention the complainant got judgment, the supreme court holding that a railroad company cannot limit its liability.

A public utilities commission bill was passed, 20 to 9, by the Connecticut Senate last week, after six hours' debate. Its passage in the House is also predicted. It provides for a commission of three members at salaries of five thousand dollars each, to have supervision over the transportation, telephone, and telegraph lines and express, gas, electric lighting and water companies in the state. The bill passed was a minority report of the judiciary committee, the bill of the majority having called for two commissions, one of which would have been the present railroad commission, with broadened powers, and a separate commission to supervise other public service corporations.

The postoffice department, for the first time in nearly thirty years, is self-supporting, and Postmaster-General Hitchcock has accordingly returned to the secretary of the treasury the three million dollars which was set aside from the public funds to defray the expenses of the postal service in the current fiscal year. There is at present a postal surplus of more than one million dollars. When he assumed the cabinet position under President Taft there was a deficit of more than seventeen million five hundred thousand dollars, the largest in the history of the postal service.

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