master could himself be sued for any wrong, his principal could also be sued for the acts of his agent.The texts also established the general proposition to be relied on by the plaintiffs that where a principal had given general power to his agent, he was bound by all the acts done by the agent in the exercise of his power.As Story put it,“[t]he maxim of natural justice applies here with its full force, that he who, without intentional fraud, has enabled any person to do an act which must be injurious to himself or to another innocent party, shall himself suffer the injury, rather than the innocent party who has placed confidence in him.”53 But the court was not convinced that these general statements settled the issue. Jervis CJ interrupted the flow of the argument with a question relating to the facts before the court: did a master have any authority to sign bills of lading before he had received any goods on board? The judges followed with the the point that, since a bill of lading was a signed acknowledgment that the goods were on board, a master who signed without obtaining the goods would be committing a fraud; which in turned raised a question about whether in English law, a principal was liable for the intentional wrongs of his agent.54 These questions were not directly answered by the treatises: the answer had to be teased out of legal argumentation. Richard Crowder, for the plaintiffs, made a number of arguments, clearly thinking on his feet. He began by appealing to arguments of convenience, suggesting that the doctrine contended for by the defendants would undermine the negotiability of bills of lading, and be bad for commerce.On the question of the nature of the master’s authority, he conceded that he did not have a general authority to sign bills of lading prior to receiving goods; but argued that he had an apparent authority to sign all bills without restriction. “The master of a ship, assuming he has special directions from his owners as to the form of the bills of lading, being clothed with apparent authority as master, which enables him to impose upon third parties, his owners are clearly responsible for his acts - whether of negligence or of fraud.” To support the last point, he cited an eighteenth century case where a merchant was held liable for the fraud of his factor in effecting a sale, where Lord Holt CJ had observed that “seeing somebody must be a loser by this deceit, it is more reason that he re cht swi s s e n scha f t al s j ur i st i sch e dok t r i n 150 53 Quoted in Grant v. Norway (1851) 10 cb 665 at 674. 54 Grant v. Norway (1851) 10 cb 665 at 674. The case cited was Lickbarrow v. Mason (1787) 2T.R. 63.
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