It is not claimed that the four transportation companies, organized in 1872, can be held jointly liable for the loss of the produce and merchandise shipped on the Yeager, by reason of their being in fact partners, having a right to participate in the profits of the business conducted by and in the name of the 'Kountz Line.' They did not share, or agree to share, the profits or to divide the losses of that business as a unit. On the other hand, it is not disputed that, according to well-settled principles of law, a person not a partner or joint trader may, under some circumstances, be held liable as if he were, in fact, a partner or joint trader. 'Where the parties are not in reality partners,' says Story, 'but are held out to the world as such in transactions affecting third persons,' they will be held to be partners as to such persons. Story, Partn. § 64. And in Gow on Partnership, 4, it is laid down as an undeniable proposition that 'persons appearing ostensibly as joint traders are to be recognized and treated as partners, whatever may be the nature of the agreement under which they act, or whatever motive or inducement may prompt them to such an exhibition.' And so it was adjudged in Waugh v. Carver, 2 H. Bl. 235, 246, where it was said by Lord Chief Justice EYRE that if one will lend his name as a partner he becomes, as against all the world, a partner, 'not upon the ground of the real transaction between them, but upon principles of general policy, to prevent the frauds to which creditors would be liable.' We do not mean to say that such liability exists in every case where the person sought to be charged holds himself out as a partner or joint trader with others. The qualifications of the general rule are recognized in Thompson v. First Nat. Bank of Toledo, 111 U.S. 529, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 689, where it was held, upon full consideration, that 'a person who is not in fact a partner, who has no interest in the business of the partnership, and does not share in its profits, and is sought to be charged for its debts because of having held himself out, or permitted himself to be held out, as a partner, cannot be made liable upon contracts of the partnership except with those who have contracted with the partnership upon the faith of such partnership.' At the same time the court observed that there may be cases in which the holding out has been so public and so long continued as to justify the inference, as matter of fact, that one dealing with the partnership knew it and relied upon it, without direct testimony to that effect.
As there is no evidence of any direct representation by these transportation companies, or any of them, to the shippers of the cargo in question, as to their relations in business with each other, or as to their relations respectively with the Kountz Line corporation, or the Kountz Line, the inquiry in this case must be whether they so conducted themselves, with reference to the general public, as to induce a shipper, acting with reasonable caution, to believe that they had formed a combination in the nature of a partnership, or were engaged as joint traders under the name of the Kountz Line. In our judgment, this question must be answered in the affirmative. It could not, we think, be otherwise answered, consistently with the inferences which the facts reasonably justify.