If any common carrier shall convert and appropriate to its own use any property of another held by it on consignment or in course of transportation, it shall be liable to the consignee or other owner of such property, not only for the value of such property, but for an additional amount, as a penalty for such conversion, equivalent to five times the value of the property so appropriated to its own use and it shall be further liable to the consignee or other owner of such property for such special damages as may have been suffered in consequence of such conversion and such punitive or exemplary damages as may be recovered in an action against such common carrier. There may be recovered in the same action, and included in the same verdict, all the amounts above provided for. But so much of this section as provides for a penalty of five times the value of the property converted shall have no application when the common carrier has converted such property in consequence of a wreck of the car in which the property being transported was contained, when the conversion was in consequence of the property being so damaged in transportation as to render it unfit for the purpose intended or when the common carrier through error delivers the property being transported to the wrong consignee.
HISTORY: 1962 Code Section 58-576; 1952 Code Section 58-576; 1942 Code Section 7162; 1932 Code Section 7162; Civ. C. '22 Section 3884; Civ. C. '12 Section 2570; 1902 (23) 1052; 1906 (25) 108.