BAGGAGE - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

BAGGAGEAuthored

The Law Mind • 1056 words

Definition

In the law of carriers, baggage means the personal articles a traveler carries for use, convenience, or comfort during and after a journey — typically clothing, toiletries, and other items suited to the traveler's station and the purpose of travel. The defining feature is personal use: an item qualifies as baggage when the passenger carries it for individual necessity or convenience, not for commercial purposes such as sale or trade.

The carrier's liability for lost or damaged baggage turns on this definition. Items within the legal meaning of baggage receive the carrier's full common-carrier liability. Articles smuggled into a trunk for commercial purposes — merchandise, goods for resale — fall outside the definition and receive reduced or no such protection, because the carrier had no notice that it was undertaking responsibility for them as baggage.

The scope of the term has been calibrated by courts to the habits and reasonable expectations of the traveling class: what a traveler of similar circumstances would ordinarily bring for the journey's immediate needs or ultimate purpose. This is not a fixed inventory but a functional test.

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Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Portable cases, large bags, and similar equipment for manually carrying personal items while traveling. Secondarily, psychological factors that interfere with effective functioning ("emotional baggage").

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "The trunks, valises, satchels, etc., which a traveler carries with him on a journey; luggage." Also, historically: the portable provisions and equipment of an army; and — notably — archaic or pejorative senses referring to a woman of loose morals, a person of bad character, or trashy talk.

The legal meaning tracks the common traveler's sense closely but adds a consequential limitation: common usage asks only whether the item is physically carried by a traveler, while the legal definition asks whether it is carried for personal use. A crate of merchandise in a passenger's trunk is baggage in the colloquial sense; it is not baggage in the legal sense. That distinction controls carrier liability.

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Why It Matters in Research

The primary research significance of BAGGAGE is its role as the boundary condition for common-carrier liability. Whether a traveler recovers fully for lost or destroyed goods depends on whether those goods were legally "baggage" at the time of loss. Courts and treatise writers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries litigated and debated this boundary extensively, because carriers routinely transported passengers with trunks containing both personal items and commercial samples or goods.

Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should note several traps:

First, the term's scope expanded and contracted as transportation modes changed. Railroad-era cases set a narrower standard than later aviation-era frameworks, which acknowledged that business travelers routinely carry laptops, equipment, and commercial materials as ordinary travel necessities. Do not assume a uniform standard across periods.

Second, Bouvier's definition is notably more generous than Black's: Bouvier emphasizes the traveler's particular class and habits as calibrating what counts, while Black's leads with an exclusion of merchandise. These framings produce different outcomes at the margins and reflect real doctrinal tension in the cases.

Third, Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not contain a useful entry on BAGGAGE as such — the source material here reflects an error in indexing, returning text about "bad" in pleading. Researchers relying on Anderson's for this term will find nothing relevant.

Fourth, the army sense of the word — portable military equipment and provisions — appears in historical dictionaries and older statutes but has no operative legal meaning in the carrier context. If researching military law or logistics in historical sources, the term carries an entirely different meaning and should not be conflated with the transportation law usage.

Fifth, modern statutory frameworks (particularly in aviation, governed by treaty regimes such as the Warsaw Convention and its successor the Montreal Convention) have largely displaced common-law carrier liability rules for international air travel, replacing the case-by-case "personal use" test with defined liability caps. Researchers moving from nineteenth-century case law to modern aviation disputes are crossing a doctrinal divide, not merely following an evolving line.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Black's Law Dictionary (both first and second editions) defines baggage consistently: articles of personal convenience or necessity usually carried by passengers for their own use, explicitly excluding merchandise or valuables carried for purposes of sale. Both editions cite Story on Bailments and Hutchinson on Carriers as the authoritative treatise support, pointing researchers to those works for the full case-law synthesis.

Bouvier's Law Dictionary offers the most useful elaboration. Its definition — drawn from Chief Justice Cockburn — frames the inquiry as what a passenger of the traveler's class and circumstances would ordinarily carry for the journey's immediate necessities or ultimate purpose. This is the functional, contextual test that proved most durable in litigation, because it accommodated changing travel habits without requiring a fixed item list.

Neither Black's nor Bouvier's addresses the aviation context, which falls entirely outside the temporal range of both works. Researchers should treat the historical dictionary entries as authoritative for common-carrier railroad and steamship cases but should consult statutory and treaty sources for modern transportation law.

Anderson's Dictionary of Law does not supply a relevant entry; the indexed text returns content on the pleading term "bad" rather than on baggage. This is a corpus gap researchers should note.

Webster's 1913 preserves two senses absent from the legal dictionaries: the military sense (army provisions and equipment) and the archaic pejorative senses (loose woman, person of bad character). These meanings were already obsolescent by 1913 in ordinary usage and have no legal application, but they explain why older non-legal texts using the word may not be referring to travel goods at all.

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Jurisdictional Note

The common-law definition of baggage was relatively uniform across American and English courts, though the specific items held to qualify varied with the facts. Modern jurisdictional variation is most significant in international air travel, where treaty law (Montreal Convention, incorporated into U.S. law) governs, and in state consumer protection statutes that may impose additional carrier disclosure obligations regarding liability limits.

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BAGGAGEmain

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

In the law of carriers. This term comprises such articles of personal con- venience or necessity as are usually carried by passengers for their personal use, and not merchandise or other valuables, although carried in the trunks of passengers, which are not designed for any such use, but for other purposes, such as a sale and the like. Story, Bailm. § 499. See, also, Hutch. Carr. § 679; L. R. 6 Q. B. 612; 6 Hill, 586; 9 Humph. 621; 23 Fed. Rep. 765. See cases collected in 1 Amer. & Eng. Enc. Law, 1042. The term includes whatever the passenger takes with him for his personal use or con- venience according to the habits or wants of the particular class to which he belongs, either with reference to the immediate necessities or ultimate purpose of the journey. L. R. 6 Q. B. 612.

BAGGAGEmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

Such articles of apparel, ornament, etc., as are in daily use by travellers, for convenience, comfort, or re- creation. "It includes whatever the pas- senger takes with him for his personal use or convenience according to the habits or wants of the particular, class to which he belongs, either with reference to the im- mediate necessities or ultimate purpose of the journey;" per Cockburn, C. J., in L. R. 6 Q. B. 612; only such articles of neces- sity or convenience as are generally car- ried by passengers for their personal use; 3 Ohio Dec. 192; 6 Misc. Rep. 388. It was formerly held that carriers are not liable, as common carriers, for baggage unless a distinct price was paid for its carriage; 1 Salk. 2821; and see 3 H. & C. 185; but the rule is now otherwise in England and America; L. R. 6 Q. B. 612; 19 Wend. 281; 26 id. 591; 19 III. 556;6 Ohio 358. This term has been held to include jew- elry carried as baggage, and which formed a part of female attire, the plaintiff being on a journey with his family; 4 Bingh. 218; 8 Pa. 451. A watch, carried in one's trunk, is proper baggage; 10 Ohio 145;1 Newb. 494; but see 9 Humphr. 621; 18 Mass. 275; the surgical instruments of an army surgeon; 12 Wall. 262; valuable laces carried by a foreign woman of rank, for which the jury found in $10,000 dam- ages; 100 U. S. 24; one revolver, but not two; 56 Ill. 212; an opera glass; 33 Ind. 379; bedding of a poor man moving with his family; 35 Vt. 604; 4 Misc. Rep. 266; such articles as are ordinarily carried by trav- ellers in valises; 42 Mo. App. 134; but not money, even to a reasonable amount; 6 Hill, N. Y. 586; 22 Ill. 278; intended for trade, business, or investment, or for trans- portation, and not intended for the pas- senger while travelling; 70 Cal. 169; Civil Code Cal. § 2181; contra, 98 Mass. 371; nor samples of merchandise; 18 C. B. N. S. 818; 98 Mass. 83; 6 Hill, N. Y. 586; 59 Hun 625; 66 id. 456; 126 Mass. 121; 35 Ohio St. 541; 52 Kan. 398; nor jewelry bought for presents; 4 Bosw. 225; 85 Cal. 329; nor for a stock of jewelry carried by a salesman to be sold (checked, without saying anything as to its contents, and there being nothing to indicate its contents, and railroad company's agent having checked it without inquiries); 148 U. S. 627; nor a feather-bed not intended for use on the journey; 106 Mass. 146; nor a lawyer's papers and bank notes to be used. by him in conducting a case; 19 C. B. N. S. 321; nor trunks containing stage properties, costumes, paraphernalia, and advertising matters of a theatrical company, unless ac- cepted as baggage, but the carrier, though without fault, is liable for the destruction of the trunks where its agent checked them as baggage with full knowledge that they contained, besides personal apparel, stage costumes and properties; 26 Pac. R. 230; s. C. 20 Oreg. 392. Books for reading or amuse- ment; 6 Ind. 242; a harness-maker's tools, valued at ten dollars; and a rifle; 10 How. Pr. 330; 14 Pa. 129; and a rifle, revolver, two gold chains, two gold rings, and a sil- ver pencil case: 32 Up. Can. Q. B. 66; and a carpet; 41 Mo. 503; are considered baggage. An illustrated catalogue, the individual property of a travelling salesman, prepared by himself, at his own expense, necessary for his convenience and use in his business, and carried with him on his trips, is per- sonal baggage, and a recovery for it may be had against one engaged in transferring baggage from depots to hotels, through whose fault a valise containing the cata- logue was lost; 121 Ind. 226. But if a carrier know that merchandise is included among baggage, and do not ob- ject, he is liable to the same extent as for other goods taken in the due course of his business; 8 E. D. Smith 571; 8 Exch. 30; but he must have actual knowledge; 13 С. B. N. S. 818; L. R. 6 Q. B. 612; 73 III. 348; 41 Miss. 671; 52 N. Y. 429; 29 S. W. Rep. 196. See 72 Hun 5. And see COMMON

BAGGAGEmain

Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed.) • 1910

In the law of carriers. This term comprises such articles of personal convenience or necessity as ure usually carried by passengers for their personal use, and not merchandise or other valuables, although carried in the trunks of passengers, which are not designed for any such

BAGGAGEn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

The clothes, tents, utensils, and provisions of an army. The trunks, valises, satchels, etc., which a traveler carries with him on a journey; luggage. The baronet's baggage on the roof of the coach. Thackeray. We saw our baggage following below. Johnson. Purulent matter. [Obs.] Barrough. Trashy talk. [Obs.] Ascham. A man of bad character. [Obs.] Holland. A woman of loose morals; a prostitute. A disreputable, daring, laughing, painted French baggage. Thackeray. A romping, saucy girl. [Playful] Goldsmith.

baggagenoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

Portable cases, large bags, and similar equipment for manually carrying, pushing, or pulling personal items while traveling | Factors, especially psychological ones, which interfere with a person's ability to function effectively. | A woman. A female, especially one who is saucy, impudent. | An army's portable equipment; its baggage train.

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