§ 15.095.Railroad Companies; Carriers

A nineteenth-century provision that still answers a real question about linear businesses.

A suit against a railroad company, a canal company, or the owners of a line of transportation vehicles — for injury to a person or property on the railroad, canal, or line, or for liability as a carrier — may be brought in a precinct through which that line passes, or in a precinct in which the route begins or ends.

The rule fits the defendant. A railroad has no single location; it is a line across the state. Fixing venue at a principal office would send every claim to one city, and fixing it at the place of injury would be useless for a shipment damaged somewhere in transit.

Two categories of claim are covered, and they are different. Personal or property injury on the line is the accident case. Liability as a carrier is the freight case — goods lost, damaged, or not delivered — which is a contract-flavoured claim about the carrier's duty as a bailee.

The terminus option matters for the freight claim. A shipper who cannot say where along a route the goods were damaged can sue where the route begins or ends.

Note what this section is not. A railroad employee injured at work sues under the federal Employers' Liability Act, and that claim has its own venue provision earlier in the chapter with three counties of its own. This section is for passengers, shippers, and members of the public.

The vessel provision immediately following covers the waterborne equivalent.