Court Opinion

ID: 9768182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:46:12.59257+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:37.319031
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from the majority opinion.
There is no claim in the instant case that the Seelbach Hotel breached its duty concerning the accommodations it furnished the Cadicks, other than to make available a baby crib to them. It is not contended the hotel was negligent in maintaining an unprotected hot radiator pipe in the room in which they were placed. The question is thus narrowed to whether this hotel exposed to danger Gail Cadick, the infant guest, by not providing special sleeping facilities for her.
There is nothing in the record to indicate that anything furnished the Cadicks was defectively constructed or was below the standard of accommodations customarily provided for infants. I repeat that the sole basis of the alleged dereliction of duty is that the hotel failed to provide a special bed, such as a baby crib.
Obviously a child eight months of age is utterly incapable of caring for itself and is completely under the care and control of its parents. Consequently, it would be unreasonable to impose upon a hotel the absolute duty to anticipate an infant’s needs when the hotel must negotiate solely with the parents who know better than anyone else the facilities which are required for their child’s safety.
In determining whether the hotel’s premises were reasonably safe for Gail Cadick, the infant guest, it is uncontradicted that her parents made that determination because they accepted the room for her even though there was no baby crib in it. Furthermore, they assured the bellboy that the accommodations were acceptable. Far from considering the room “unsafe”, the Cadicks, after the accident and after returning from the hospital with the child, placed her back in the same bed situated in the same position, and Mr. Cadick went on back to sleep.
The parents instead of the hotel were the immediate and primary custodians of the child in the privacy of the assigned hotel room which they accepted as satisfactory. It is my view that the conduct of the parents of Gail Cadick in rearranging the beds and furniture in the room constituted the immediate and proximate cause of the injury. As has been pointed out, the parents accepted the accommodations with no crib for their child and then proceeded to move the bed, on which the child would sleep, next to the hot radiator pipe and into a potentially dangerous place. Could the hotel have envisioned that they would do this rearranging?
It is fair to say that if the Cadicks had taken the small night table from between the two beds and then moved the beds together and placed the child between them on the beds, the child would have been in a place of comparative safety. It is apparent the child would have been far removed from the hot radiator pipe and would have been less likely to fall from the bed.
Such conduct of the parents in moving the child’s bed near the hot radiator pipe was not reasonably foreseeable by the hotel. This act of the parents constituted the sole negligence that produced the injuries, which negligence superseded the claimed negligence of any one else. See American Home *753Fire Assurance Company v. Louisville Gas & Electric Company, Ky., 307 S.W.2d 562.
It is my opinion it would be unrealistic to hold that the Seelbach Hotel stands in loco parentis to the child of the Cadicks and that it must assume the risk of the infant’s care under the circumstances shown in this case.
MONTGOMERY, J., joins in this dissent.