Title: Holcomb v. Meeds
Citation: 173 Kan. 321, 246 P.2d 239
Docket Number: 38,692
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: July 3, 1952

173 Kan. 321 (1952)
246 P.2d 239
BERNICE M. HOLCOMB, Widow of Lionel Holcomb, Deceased, Appellee,
v.
WILLIAM E. MEEDS and SYLVIA E. BRUGGER, Partners, doing business as Baxter Courts, a partnership, Appellants.
No. 38,692

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed July 3, 1952.
Grant Waggoner, of Baxter Springs, argued the cause, and C. R. Stauffacher, of Columbus, was with him on the briefs for appellants.
Sylvan Bruner and Pete Farabi, both of Pittsburg, argued the cause, and L.M. Resler and Morris Matuska, both of Pittsburg, and Paul Armstrong and Robert T. Patterson, both of Columbus, were with them on the briefs for the appellee.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
HARVEY, C.J.:
This was an action for damages for an alleged wrongful death. After the issues were made up the parties in writing stipulated the facts. A trial by jury was waived and a trial by the court was had, resulting in a judgment for plaintiff. Defendants have appealed.
The pertinent facts as stipulated may be summarized or quoted as follows: The deceased, Lionel Holcomb, his wife, the plaintiff herein, and their son David, about six months old, resided in Joplin, Mo., about fourteen miles east of Baxter Springs, Kan. The defendants, as partners, owned and operated nine tourist cabins and courts known as the Baxter Courts, located about a mile south of Baxter Springs, and held themselves out to the public as engaged in the business of furnishing accommodations for lodging of travelers and transient guests for compensation.
*322 On January 2, 1950, about two o'clock a.m., Lionel Holcomb went to the Baxter Courts and requested accommodations of the defendant Meeds, who offered two cabins, No. 3 at $3 and No. 6 at $2. Holcomb accepted Cabin No. 6 and paid defendant Meeds $2 and went to the cabin unaccompanied by either of the defendants. The person accompanying Holcomb did not go to the office with him. Defendants did not know the parties were not husband and wife until after their bodies were found on January 3. Holcomb did not sign the register at the tourist camp at the time the cabin was assigned to him.
Sometime after 5:00 o'clock p.m. on January 3, 1950, Lionel Holcomb and a woman, later identified as Ruth Beets, unmarried, a resident of Quapaw, Okla., about five miles southwest from the cabins, were found dead in Cabin No. 6. His nude body was lying on the floor with his head not far from the door. Her body, nude except for a brassiere, was lying on the bed. The top bed coverings were on the end of the bed. An investigation made by the coroner and an attending physician disclosed that both of them died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. The condition of the bodies indicated that they died shortly after they occupied the cabin. An investigation made by the Baxter Springs police officers and two troopers of the Kansas Highway Patrol disclosed no evidence of violence, of foul play, or of intoxication, but two empty beer bottles were found in the back seat of Holcomb's car and there were two or three beer cans in the waste paper basket. Sometime later a gin bottle was found under the mattress near the head of the bed. The radiant gas heater was operating with medium flame.
*323 In effect at all the times above mentioned were our statutes (G.S. 1949, 36-129 and 36-130). The pertinent portions of the first of these sections reads:
In deciding the case the trial court stated:
Shortly stated, in deciding the first question the court held that the immoral or illegal purpose of Lionel Holcomb in renting the cabin did not cause his death; that the cause of death was the negligent and illegal conduct of defendants in having the radiant natural gas heater open and not connected with any chimney or other outlet or combination of outlets. As to the second question the court found no contributory negligence on the part of Lionel Holcomb which contributed to his death, and on the third question the court found the amount of damages to be $8,000, for which judgment was rendered. In this court no complaint is made of the amount of the verdict if the plaintiff was entitled to recover; hence, we need to give it no more attention.
Defendants filed a motion for a new trial upon two grounds:
This motion for a new trial was duly presented to and considered by the court and was overruled. Defendants appealed and set out the following specification of errors:
In this court appellants present the following questions for consideration by the court:
As to question "(A)" appellants frankly state, "The question is a new one in this state." It appears that no statute enacted by our legislature and no decision of this court bear directly upon the question. We do note that our statute (G.S. 1949, chapter 36), pertaining to hotels, lodging houses and restaurants, which is applicable to the cabin court operated by defendants since it has more than five rooms used for the accommodation of transient guests, although quite comprehensive, has no section pertaining to this question. It does have a section (36-206) pertaining to "Fraud or cheating in obtaining accommodations." But this has to do with an intent to defraud the owner in failing to pay for the accommodation. From this it may be concluded that members of the legislature never thought of the point raised by appellants or purposely omitted it from the statute. It does include the section (36-129) requiring gas stove connections, the pertinent portions of which have been previously quoted.
Appellants cite and rely heavily on Curtis v. Murphy, 63 Wis. 4, 22 N.W. 825 (1885). The facts in that case were that about 12:00 o'clock at night of March 13, 1882, plaintiff came to the hotel with a disreputable woman, whom he had met on the streets and whose name he did not know, and registered as Thomas Curtis and wife and called for a room, which was assigned to him by the night clerk. He noticed at the top of the register a statement to the effect that all money and jewels should be given to the proprietor. The clerk informed him the proprietor was in bed. Curtis thereupon handed to the clerk $102 for safe keeping and took a receipt, which read: "I.O.U. $102," signed by the clerk. That night the clerk absconded with the money. Curtis sued the proprietor of the hotel for that amount. There was a state statute then in force which placed a special liability on the proprietor of a hotel for the safe keeping of money or jewels left with him. The trial court concluded *325 plaintiff could not recover because the money was not left with the proprietor. The supreme court thought that was a too strict interpretation of the law, but held that since Curtis was renting the room for an immoral purpose he could not recover. A careful search of the Citator discloses no case in which the Wisconsin supreme court has followed this case on that point. The case has been criticized as being unsound by Beale on Innkeepers and Hotels. It should be noted that this was not an action in tort; it was an action to recover money which was left with the hotel clerk. In this respect it is much like the case of Arcade Hotel Co. v. Wiatt, 44 Oh. St. 32, 4 N.E. 398, and our own case of Johnson v. Reynolds, 3 Kan. 257.
In Lucia v. Omel, 61 N.Y. Supp. 659, it was held:
In the opinion (p. 660) it was said:
In Commonwealth v. Regan, 182 Mass. 22, 64 N.E. 407, a hotel keeper had a license to supply liquor on Sunday to "guests who have resorted to his house for food or lodging." He was prosecuted for selling liquor on Sunday to persons who first had ordered and been served with food for which a separate charge was made and which was paid for. The trial court instructed that if a man "ordered a turkey dinner, still he would not be a guest resorting to the hotel for food within the meaning of the statute if his object in *326 going there was to get the liquor and his ordering the food a mere means of obtaining it." In reversing a conviction the supreme judicial court held: (headnote in N.E.).
In the opinion it was said:
In Jones v. Bland, 182 N.C. 70, 108 S.E. 344, in the opinion (p. 72) the court said:
It was further held, however, that an instruction must be considered and interpreted with reference to the material facts submitted for decision, and that one who enters a hotel for an ulterior purpose and who goes beyond the scope and purpose of the invitation and wanders into some remote portion of the premises not covered by the invitation, where there is no reason to expect him to go, is not an invitee, toward whom the hotel proprietor is required to exercise the duty of ordinary care, but is a trespasser or a mere licensee, whom the proprietor owes no duty except not to willfully or wantonly injure him.
*327 In Tomko v. Feldman, Appellant, 128 Pa. Super. 429, 194 Atl. 338, plaintiff sued the proprietor of the hotel to recover damages for the death of his wife, age twenty-two years, and his daughter, three years and nine months of age, and alleged the deaths were caused by the negligence of defendant in failing to provide a safe method of heating the room occupied by plaintiff's wife and daughter. The evidence disclosed that Mrs. Tomko and her daughter entered the hotel between 1:00 and 2:00 o'clock a.m. on February 22, 1934, accompanied by a Mr. Davis, who registered as Fred Davis and wife. Plaintiff and his wife were known by defendant and his son, who assigned a room to Mr. Davis, Mrs. Tomko and the child. The temperature was ten to fifteen degrees above zero. The room was heated with a gas stove which had no means of carrying away the fumes generated by the combustion of gas in the heater. Between 3:00 and 3:30 o'clock p.m. on the same date the room was entered. Mrs. Tomko and the baby were found in bed and Davis on the floor. They were all dead  the deaths having occurred from two to six hours previously and having been caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, which was produced by the burning heater in the room. The syllabus reads:
In the opinion (pp. 434, 435), the court had occasion to say:
In Rapee v. Beacon Hotel Corp., 293 N.Y. 196, 56 N.E.2d 548, plaintiff and his fiancée registered at defendant's hotel as husband and wife under an assumed name and went out for the evening. On returning at an early hour the next morning there was no response to their repeated ringing of the elevator bell. Plaintiff leaned against the shaft door of the elevator to listen for what seemed to be the sound of the approaching car. His weight caused the door to slide open and he fell in the pit below. He sued for damages for personal injuries and recovered judgment. At the trial the court charged the jury:
On appeal the charge was approved and the judgment affirmed.
Meador v. Hotel Grover et al., 193 Miss. 392, 9 So. 2d 782, was an action by an administrator for the wrongful death of his intestate, who was fatally injured at an elevator in a hotel while going to a room of a prostitute for immoral purposes. A demurrer was sustained to his petition. The supreme court reversed and used this language:
The trial court held there was no causal connection between the misconduct of plaintiff's husband and his death. We concur in that view. In Parker v. Kirkwood, 134 Kan. 749, 752, 8 P.2d 340, the court had occasion to use this language:
Many other cases to the same effect are digested in the General Digest under Innkeeper, Key No. 10. There is no question here about the negligence of the defendants. The only heating facility provided for this cabin was a gas stove which gave off poisonous gases in violation of statute. Indeed, it would have been negligence if there had been no statute.
There is not much else to this lawsuit. Counsel for appellants complain the court did not find Lionel Holcomb guilty of contributory negligence and in their brief they state: "It is definitely agreed that when the bodies were found, the south window was closed." We find no agreement on that point in the stipulated facts. Aside from that, it is difficult to see that the closing of the window at a time when the temperature was fifty-five degrees would violate any degree of standard of care. Neither do we think that the judgment of the trial court, based upon an agreed statement of facts without the necessity of weighing conflicting testimony, indicated that it was rendered under the influence of passion and prejudice. Certainly the parties contemplated that the court would predicate its judgment upon the stipulated facts. We find no error in the record.
The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.