Limitation and Exclusion of Liability in Bailment

Abstract

encouragement from the courts.2 From time to time over the past century there have been generalized statements summing up the developed doctrines as they applied to common carriers and as they applied to bailees with a less strict liability.3 The most recent attempt to give perspective and direction to the operation of qualifying and exculpatory notices or contract provisions was by the English Court of Appeal in 1945 in Alderslade v. Hendon Laundry Ltd.' The judgment in that case, approved as it was by the Privy Council in Canada S. S. Lines Ltd. v. Regem,5 has provided a focus for the subsequent case law in England and in Canada. Inevitably, there had to be refinements in its application, and, after a decade, some appraisal or re-appraisal of the development of this branch of the law is justified; the more so by reason of such recent decisions as Brown v. Toronto Auto Parks Ltd.6 in the Ontario Court of Appeal, and Woolmer v. Delmer Price Ltd.' in the English Queen's Bench Division. The English courts yielded without any apparent struggle to the commercial advantage taken of the defenceless customer by common carriers who passed to the public some or all of the risks of their obligatory service.8