392.130. Companies to provide facilities to meet public needs--penalty for failure to deliver messages.
Companies to provide facilities to meet public needs--penalty forfailure to deliver messages.
392.130. It shall be the duty of every telegraph ortelephone company, incorporated or unincorporated, operating anytelephone or telegraph line in this state, to provide sufficientfacilities at all its offices for the dispatch of the business ofthe public, to receive dispatches from and for other telephone ortelegraph lines and from or for any individual, and on payment ortender of their usual charges for transmitting and deliveringdispatches as established by the rules and regulations of suchtelephone or telegraph lines, to transmit and deliver the same todesignated address and to use due diligence to place saiddispatch in the hands of the addressee, by the most direct meansavailable, without material alterations, promptly, and withimpartiality and good faith under a penalty of three hundreddollars for every neglect or refusal so to transmit and deliver,to be recovered with costs of suit by civil action by the personor persons or company sending or desiring to send such dispatch;two-thirds of the amount recovered to be retained by theplaintiff and one-third to be paid into the county school fund ofthe county in which the suit was instituted, and the burden ofproof shall be upon the company to show that the wire was engagedas the reason for the delay in transmitting such dispatch.
(RSMo 1939 § 5330)Prior revisions: 1929 § 4925; 1919 § 10136; 1909 § 3330