Western Union Telegraph Company v. Hughes

By statutes of the State of Virginia a liability to forfeit the sum of one hundred dollars was imposed upon a telegraph company for an omission to proihptly transmit and deliver telegrams received by it. Code of Virginia, .1887, secs. 1291, 1292. On November 2, 1903, Hughes, the defendant in error, handed to the Western Union Telegraph Company, at its office in Danville, Virginia, a message to be transmitted by wire to Pocahontas, Virginia, and there delivered to the addressee. In regular course such message would have gone by way of Bluefield, West Virginia. It reached that point,’ but was…