Hadley & Anor v Baxendale & Ors,1854 EWHC Exch J70

One broken shaft, to be conveyed by the defendants as carriers and although such second day elapsed before the commencement of this suit, yet the defendants did not nor would deliver the said broken shaft at Greenwich on the said second day, but wholly neglected and refused so to do for the space of seven days after the said shaft was so delivered to defendant. Due to absence of that shaft, mill of plaintiff was closed. The plaintiffs' servant told the clerk of defendant that the mill was stopped, and that the shaft must be sent immediately; and in answer to the inquiry when the shaft would be taken, the answer was, that if it was sent up by twelve o'clock an day, it would be delivered at Greenwich on the following day.
if the special circumstances under which the contract was actually made where communicated by the plaintiffs to the defendants, and thus known to both parties, the damages resulting from the breach of such a contract, which they would reasonably contemplate, would be the amount of injury which would ordinarily follow from a breach of contract under these special circumstances so known and communicated. But, on the other hand, if these special circumstances were wholly unknown to the party breaking the contract, he, at the most, could only be supposed to have had in his contemplation the amount of injury which would arise generally, and in the great multitude of cases not affected by any special circumstances, from such a breach of contract.
The rule that the immediate cause is to be regarded in considering the loss, is applicable here. There was no special contract between these parties. A carrier has a certain duty cast upon him by law, and that duty is not to be enlarged to an indefinite extent in the absence of a special contract, or of fraud or malice. The maxim "dolus circuitu non purgatur", does not apply. The duty of the clerk, who was in attendance at the defendants' office, was to enter the article, and to take the amount of the carriage; but a mere notice to him, such as was here given, could not make the defendants, as carriers, liable as upon a special contract.