Buck v. Del City Apartments, Inc., 41165

• Court: Supreme Court of Oklahoma
• Writing for the Court: McINERNEY
• Citation: 431 P.2d 360,1967 OK 81
• Parties: E. J. BUCK and Muriel F. Buck, Plaintiffs in Error, v. DEL CITY APARTMENTS, INC., a corporation, and Felbur Hoyt Sitton and Mildred Sitton, Defendants in Error.
• Docket Number: No. 41165,41165
• Decision Date: 28 March 1967

Page 360

431 P.2d 360 1967 OK 81 E. J. BUCK and Muriel F. Buck, Plaintiffs in Error,
v.
DEL CITY APARTMENTS, INC., a corporation, and Felbur Hoyt
Sitton and Mildred Sitton, Defendants in Error. No. 41165. Supreme Court of Oklahoma. March 28, 1967.

Page 362

Syllabus by the Court

1. Modern law regards as an innkeeper's guest anyone who is a patron in an hotel or motel as such, and receives therein the customary treatment, service and accommodation.

2. The operator of a motel, while sustaining to his guests the relation of an innkeeper, is not an insurer of the safety of such persons upon his premises, but owes to them the duty applicable to a business invitee, i.e., to exercise reasonable care to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe and suitable condition, so that the guests will not in the use of the premises, be exposed to hidden or unreasonable dangers.

Appeal from the District Court of Oklahoma County; George Howard Wilson, Trial Judge.

Action to recover damages for guest's injury from fall upon icy steps in a motel. Trial court sustained demurrer to the evidence and entered judgment for motelkeepers. Affirmed.

Charles W. Stubbs, Welcome D. Pierson, Bliss Kelly, Oklahoma City, for plaintiffs in error.

Duke Duvall, Duvall & Head, Oklahoma City, for defendant in error Del City Apartments, Inc.

Pierce, Nock, Duncan, Couch & Hendrickson, by Calvin W. Hendrickson, Oklahoma City, for defendants in error Felbur Hoyt Sitton and Mildred Sitton.

McINERNEY, Justice.

This was a consolidated action by husband and wife. Recovery was sought for her injury, his loss of consortium and for medical expenses. The injury which occasioned the litigation happened January 6, 1960, at the premises in Del City operated as 'Del Motel'. The wife fell after she slipped on ice upon the steps in front of the cabin she and her husband were occupying. The trial ended in judgment sustaining a demurrer to plaintiffs' evidence.

Our task here is to decide whether the wife, when injured, was on the premises as a tenant or as a guest of the motel; to define, on the basis of the status found to exist, the applicable duty owed to her; and to determine if the evidence, when measured by the standard of care properly to be applied, shows the breach of any legal duty owed to her.

The place where the accident occurred consists of a number of small cabins, each having a separate front entrance with a porch and two concrete steps leading from it to a short walkway. Access to each cabin may be gained through the main walkway on the property. Operated under a state license 'as a hotel or motel', the premises are situated 'in the forty some-odd hundred block on Southeast 29th Street'. There is a large sign in front which identifies the property as the Del Motel. At the entrance to it there is an office at which prospective patrons register. At the time of the injury the property was managed, supervised and attended to by the two individual defendants. They held it under a lease from the corporate defendant 'for the operation of a motel'. Accommodations offered to the public were on a daily basis. Maid service was available. Except for a two-week vacation trip, plaintiffs had lived at the Del Motel since November 17, 1959, the date their home burned

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down. They occupied an entire cabin, paying for its use on a weekly basis.

Plaintiffs assert the wife, when injured, was a guest at the motel. To a guest, they claim, the innkeeper owes a 'high' degree of care in maintaining the hotel premises for their safe use. Cited as authority for this statement of the law is our decision in Mayo Hotel Co. v. Danciger, 143 Okl. 196, 288 P. 309. In the alternative, plaintiffs urge that if the wife was not a guest, but a tenant, her injury took place upon that portion of the premises characterized as 'common approaches or passageways'. These portions, plaintiffs insist, the landlord is under a duty to maintain in a reasonably safe condition for the use of his tenants. In support of this argument we are cited to Price v. Smith, Okl., 373 P.2d 242, 244.

Defendants counter that the wife's injury occurred while she was descending from the porch to the short walkway in front of the cabin. This area, they claim, was 'under plaintiffs' exclusive control' as the sole occupants of the cabin, and there the defendants owed no legal duty to her. Invoked to buttress this contention is the familiar rule that, absent, fraud, concealment, deceit or an express covenant of warranty of fitness for human habitation, the landlord is not liable to a tenant (or to the members of this family) for injuries due to the defective condition or faulty construction of the demised premises, where by the terms of the lease the control over such premises passed 'entirely and exclusively' to the tenant. See Godbey v. Barton, 184 Okl. 237, 86 P.2d 621, 622.

The relation of landlord and tenant cannot arise without a contract, express or implied, 'granting' to the tenant the 'exclusive possession' of property for a specified term. The exclusive possession so granted is an indispensable ingredient of an 'estate'. Not every physical occupant of land has an estate in it. For example, one who occupies a seat, even a reserved one, at the theatre or elsewhere, holds merely a license, not an estate. Tenancy does necessarily create an estate in its holder, but the duration thereof may, of course, greatly vary; it may be for years, at will or from period to period. Howard v. Manning, 79 Okl. 165, 192 P. 358, 12 A.L.R. 819.

The chief distinction between a tenant and an innkeeper's guest lies in the element of possession. A tenant is deemed to have exclusive legal possession of the demised premises and stands responsible for their care and condition. A guest, on the other hand, has merely a right to the use of the premises while the innkeeper retains his...