Raider v. Dixie Inn

• Decision Date: 06 March 1923
• Citation: 248 S.W. 229,198 Ky. 152
• Parties: RAIDER v. DIXIE INN ET AL.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

248 S.W. 229

198 Ky. 152

RAIDER v. DIXIE INN ET AL.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

March 6, 1923

Appeal from Circuit Court, Madison County.

Action by Thelma Raider against the Dixie Inn and others. Judgment for defendants after demurrer to the petition was sustained and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

R. C Oldham, of Louisville, for appellant.

A. R Burnam, Jr., of Richmond, for appellees.

SAMPSON C.J.

Appellant Thelma Raider, applied to the Dixie Inn, at Richmond, for entertainment, and paid her board and lodging for a week in advance, saying that her home was in Estill county and she had come to Richmond, at the expense of her mother, to take treatments from a physician. At the end of the week she paid in advance for another week, and so on until the end of a month, when she went down town, and on returning was informed by the proprietor and his wife, who are appellees in this case, that she no longer had a room at that hotel, and remarked to her that no explanation was due her as to why they had requested or forced her removal. Alleging that she was mortified and humiliated by the words and conduct of the proprietors of the hotel, appellant, Raider, brought this action to recover damages in the sum of $5,000. Appellees answered, and denied the averments of the petition in so far as such averments set forth harsh or improper conduct on the part of the proprietors of the hotel, but admitted that they had required appellant to vacate her room and to leave the hotel, and gave as their reason for so doing that she was a woman of bad character, recently an inmate of a house of prostitution in the city of Richmond, and had been such for many years next before she came to the Inn, and was in said city a notoriously immoral character, but that appellees did not know her when she applied for entertainment at their hotel, but immediately upon learning who she was and her manner of life had moved her belongings out of the room into the lobby of the hotel, and kindly, quietly, and respectfully asked her to leave; that they had in their hotel several ladies of good reputation who were embarrassed by the presence of appellant in the hotel and who declined to associate with her and were about to withdraw from the hotel if she continued to lodge there; that appellant had not been of good behavior since she had become a patron of the hotel. Appellant moved to strike certain of the affirmative averments from the answer, but, without waiving this motion, filed an amended petition in which she set forth substantially the same facts which she had in her original petition, adding the following paragraph:

"Plaintiff says that she is advised that these defendants (the Dixie Inn) had a legal right to remove her, and that she does not question that right, but that she was removed as a guest for hire from said Dixie Inn at a time that was improper and in a manner that was unduly disrespectful and insulting, and that she was greatly mortified and humiliated thereby, and suffered indignity because of the wrongful manner in which she was removed from said Dixie Inn as herein set out and complained of."

To the petition as amended the appellees demurred generally. This the court sustained, and, on the failure of appellant to further plead, dismissed her petition, and she appeals.

As a general rule a guest who has been admitted to an inn may afterwards be excluded therefrom by the innkeeper if the guest refuse to pay his bill, or if he becomes obnoxious to the guests by his own fault, is a person of general bad reputation, or has ceased to be a traveler by becoming a...