Wolf v. Ford

• Decision Date: 17 November 1908
• Citation: 86 N.E. 527,193 N.Y. 397
• Parties: DE WOLF v. FORD et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

193 N.Y. 397

86 N.E. 527

DE WOLF

v.FORD et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Nov. 17, 1908.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.

Action by Catharine De Wolf against Simeon Ford and another. From a judgment of the Appellate Division (119 App. Div. 808,104 N. Y. Supp. 876) affirming a judgment of the Trial Term, dismissing the complaint, plaintiff appeals. Reversed and new trial granted.

This action was brought to recover damages which the plaintiff claims to have sustained through the acts of the defendants' servant, who is charged with forcing his way into a room occupied by the plaintiff in defendants' hotel, and addressing to her insulting, derogatory, and defamatory language. The action was brought to trial before the court and a jury. At the opening of the trial the defendants' counsel moved to dismiss the complaint upon the pleadings. This motion was granted, and judgment entered dismissing the complaint. Upon appeal to the Appellate Division the judgment was affirmed by a divided court, and an appeal has been taken to this court. The sole question to be determined here is whether, upon the facts stated in the complaint and supplemented by the allegations of the defendants' answer, the case should have been submitted to the jury. The complaint alleges that on June 5, 1905, the defendants managed and controlled the Grand Union Hotel in the city of New York, which was a public inn for the entertainment of guests for hire; that the plaintiff, in company with her daughter and her brother, called at that hotel and applied for rooms, giving their true and proper names and stating the relationship of each to the other; that the plaintiff and her brother and daughter were thereupon received as guests of the hotel, and the plaintiff was assigned to a room therein; that thereafter, and at about 1 o'clock in the morning of the next day, while the plaintiff was occupying the room so assigned to her, one of the servants of the defendants, in the course of his regular employment in the hotel, forced his way into the room of the plaintiff, without her consent and against her protest, she being then undressed, except in a nightgown, and addressed to her and in her presence, and in the presence of her brother and another person, vile and insulting language, charged her with being a disreputable person, accused her of conduct imputing guilt of impropriety and immorality, and insulted her in other ways; that the plaintiff was ordered to leave the hotel, and threatened with the publication of her name in the daily papers as a disreputable person; and that these acts committed by the said defendants' servant were in violation of the defendants' obligations towards this plaintiff as their guest. In their answer the defendants admit their management and control of the hotel, and that the plaintiff was assigned to a room therein on the day mentioned in the complaint. All the other allegations of the complaint are denied. Additional facts are set forth as a separate defense, and new matter is alleged by way of justification. The substance of this separate defense and of this new matter is that the defendants had established and enforced in their hotel a rule forbidding the presence of a man in a woman's bedroom, especially at night, unless the room was occupied by husband and wife; that such a rule was reasonable and necessary for the maintenance of the good repute of the hotel, and for the protection of its guests against improper persons; that the plaintiff had violated this rule by permitting a man to enter and remain in her bedroom at a late hour of the night while she was clad only in a nightdress; that the defendants' servant informed plaintiff of the rule referred to, and requested her male visitor to leave the room, or to leave the hotel, and that this request was refused; that the acts of the defendants' servant complained of were simply such as were necessary to enforce this rule, and that no more was done than was reasonably necessary to accomplish that object.James L. Bennett, for appellant.

Franklin Pierce and John C. Gulick, for respondents.

WERNER, J. (after stating the facts as above).

As no evidence was taken at the trial, the dismissal of the complaint compels us to assume the truth of all the allegations of fact contained in that pleading. Sheridan v. Jackson, 72 N. Y. 170; Baylies, Trial Pr. (2d Ed.) 247. The facts which must therefore be regarded as established for the purposes of this review are that the relation of innkeeper and guest existed between the defendants and the plaintiff at the time when the servant of the former forced his way into the room of the latter; that this forcible entry was made without invitation from the guest, and against her protest; that she was there subjected to the mortification of exposing her person in scant attire, and to the ignominy of being accused of immoral conduct; that she and her visitor were ordered to depart from the hotel, and that all this was done by the defendants' servant without justification and in the course of his regular employment. If the defendants, in these circumstances, are not to be held responsible, it must be upon the theory that they owed no duty to the plaintiff in respect of her convenience, privacy, safety, and comfort while she was their guest, and that an innkeeper is immune from liability for any maltreatment which he or his servants may inflict upon a guest be it ever so willful or flagrant. We think it may safely be asserted that this has never been the law, and that no principel so repugnant to common decency and justice can ever find lodgment in any enlightened system of jurisprudence.

For centuries it has been settled in all jurisdictions where the common law prevails that the business of an innkeeper is of a quasi public character, invested with many privileges, and burdened with correspondingly great responsibilities. Except as the general rule of the common law is modified by statutory enactment, an innkeeper has the undoubted right to conduct his inn as he deems best, so long as he does not violate the law. Although he impliedly invites the public to his establishment, he is bound to furnish no particular kind of entertainment or accommodation, except such as may be expressly stipulated for, or such as may be reasonably implied from the prices which he charges, or the grade of the inn which he maintains. And while he is bound to accept as guests all proper persons, so long as he has room for them, he is under no legal obligation to assign a guest to any particular apartment. Fell v. Knight, 8 M. & W. 269. From the very nature of the business it is inevitable that an innkeeper must, at all reasonable times and for all proper purposes, have the right of access to and control over every part of his inn, even though separate parts thereof may be occupied by guests for hire. Over against these general rights and privileges there is the well-recognized responsibility of the innkeeper for the guest's goods and chattels brought to the inn. As to these the innkeeper is an insurer unless his common-law duty is modified by statute, and he is liable for all loss except such as is occasioned by the negligence or fraud of the guest, or by the act of God or the public enemy. Hulett v. Swift, 33 N. Y. 571, 88 Am. Dec. 405. Although this liability of the innkeeper for the loss of goods intrusted to him by his guest was clearly defined nearly four centuries ago, it has been reserved for us at this late day, in the development of our jurisprudence, to define, with such accuracy as the nature of this case requires, the relation of the innkeeper to the person of his guest. It is clearly not the conventional relation of landlord and tenant, for there is no contract as to the realty. Taylor's L. & T. § 66. A room in an inn occupied by a guest is not, in the legal sense, his dwelling house, for notwithstanding his occupancy, it is the house of the innkeeper. Rodgers v. People, 86 N. Y. 360, 40 Am. Rep. 548. Nor is the relation of innkeeper and guest usually created by express contract, for as a rule it is based wholly upon the mere circumstance that one man happens to have an inn which is patronized by another, and the law implies whatever else is necessary to constitute the relation between them. Anthon's Law Student, p. 57; Willard v. Reinhardt, 2 E. D. Smith, 148. It is a relation, moreover, which cannot be defined with exactitude in matters of detail, for it may be one thing in a mining camp, or in the remote and sparsely settled portions of a country. It may be another thing in the tavern by the rural wayside, and yet another in the modern urban palace called a hotel. Between the extreme of rugged simplicity on the one hand and of palatial magnifficence on the other, there are numberless gradations of service, attention, convenience, and luxury which must necessarily give the relation of innkeeper and guest such flexibility as will render it adaptable to varying conditions and circumstances.

But underneath all these differing conditions there is, of course, a basic legal principle which governs the general relation of innkeeper and guest. The innkeeper holds himself out as able and...