New-York tribune., 1882-08-15
RIGHTS or THE SICK.

The typhoid fever trouble at the Hotel
Bellevue, Long Branch, raises legal questions
not easily answered. Guests of hotel are taken
dangerously sick with a contagious disease
Landlords ask their relatives to remove
them. Relatives, advised to that effect by
physicians, say that the patients are in too crit
ical a state for the change. Meantime the
fellow-boarders have reno wed in swarm /;
the house is depopulated. Landlord estimates
his loss of business at upward of $4,000,
and demands and receives $500 on behalf
of each of the patients, who are too
sick to be removed. Now contagious dis
eases are liable to break out anywhere
and at any time, and it must often
happen that the sick cannot be re-
moved, that the neighbors are alarmed, and
the landlord is damaged. The courts should
explain what are the rights of the sick in such
circumstances.
Is a man liable to a bill FOR damages because
he has had an attack of typhoid feverY Law
books say that a verdict must be founded
either on some breach OF contract or on wrong
done. Now guest entering hotel Is not
commonly understood to make an agreement
that he will not contract fever while he stays.
Nor is he chargeable with wrong in falling
sick. Then on what ground must he pay dam
ages? The case looks much more like what the
courts call inevitable accident" which is not
a foundation for claim. If the landlord can
demand So, 900 for loss of business, why can
not the one hundred or so OF guests who were
driven away demand, $50 apiece for ex
penses Of leaving and seeking new place
Must all the sick pay damages for all the care,
trouble, anxiety, alarm and danger they
cause to the well who surround them &? For
shelter, supplies and services furnished ut their
request they must pay, either what they have
promised or the market value. But the law
has several maxims to the general effect: Let
the tree .lic where it falls; and ordains that
persons VINO suffer indirect injury from an
outbreak Of pestilence must bear each what
loss falls upon him the sick man his pam and
peril, the neighbors their alarm, the landlord
his loss of business. That guests may be taken
sick is, we venture to say. in legal Vlew one
of the inevitable accidents incident to hotel
keeping. We believe that landlord who
should sue a guest for damages because his
being seized with typhoid fever drove others
away would be nonsuited on his story.
But the Long Branch proprietor is reported
to have said "My guests are gone, my business
4 is stopped if | am moi to be reimbursed for
"my loss, | will close my hotel tomorrow doors
"shall be locked and windows boarded" Can
landlord lawfully do thisQ Granting that a
watering place hotcl-keeper is not liable to the
stringent rules of former En- glish law as to inns,
but has somewht broad rights to select his
guests and to close his season at his pleas
ure, it remains to be seen whether i.ll such
mere rights of property and business manage
mcnt are not subject TO sOme exceptions III
favor of humanity when imminent peril to those
struggling with mortal disease is in question
Modern civilization provides officers and rules
for the preservation of the public health, and
whatever insulation or removal of the sick is
required for the public good may be done by
public authority Were it fully established
that "A guest or tenant was TOO sick to be
safely moved a landlord who should either
fasten him up in the hotel or turn him out upon
the sidewalk would probably be told that he had
exercised his apparent rights little beyond
what the law will tolerate