Court Opinion

ID: 9578125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:41:49.806125+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:42.475367
License: Public Domain

Thomas Gallagher, Justice
(dissenting).
1. The question presented is whether defendant should have reasonably anticipated that someone would throw or drop some substance from a window on the Nicollet Avenue side of the hotel shortly after midnight the last day of the convention and whether it had taken reasonable precautions to prevent such conduct.
It is well settled that an innkeeper is liable to third persons for the act of a guest only where he knew, or by the exercise of ordinary care could have known, that the guest was likely to do some act that would result in injury to such third person. 28 Am. Jur., Innkeepers, § 138; Annotation, 42 A. L. R. 1088. The duty rests upon him to protect such persons from foreseeable risks attendant upon the maintenance and operation of the property and to exercise reasonable care to keep it in such condition so as not to endanger them. He is not required to guard against every conceivable or possible danger, but only against those which appear reasonably probable. Kapphahn v. Martin Hotel Co. 230 Iowa 739, 298 N. W. 901; Gore v. Whitmore Hotel Co. 229 Mo. App. 910, 83 S. W. (2d) 114; Wolk v. Pittsburgh Hotels Co. 284 Pa. 545, 131 A. 537, 42 A. L. R. 1081; Holly v. Meyers Hotel & Tavern, Inc. 9 N. J. 493, 89 A. (2d) 6.
2. When plaintiff was injured shortly after midnight, the convention had been in progress for 3 days and had reached its final stages. It had been quite disorderly. There is testimony that on previous days some of the guests had thrown or dropped ice cubes and in one instance a screen from the upper windows of the hotel. There is no evidence that *391acts of this kind had been a continuous practice during the convention, or that they had been engaged in at all on the day of plaintiff’s injury. There is no evidence that defendant knew that any such misconduct was taking place just prior to the time of the occurrence involved. Defendant had retained two men regularly employed at the hotel and had six more men to patrol its corridors and prevent disorders during the convention. In addition the convention corporation had employed two men for this purpose, and the police of the city continued to maintain a regular 24-hour beat on the sidewalks adjacent to the hotel. During previous days of the convention, when defendant’s manager had been notified that objects had been thrown from hotel windows, he had promptly checked the rooms in which he suspected such misconduct was occurring, but in each instance their occupants had denied that anyone therein had been guilty of the offenses described.
3. It is difficult to speculate as to what further precautions should reasonably have been required of defendant without making it an absolute insurer. Obviously, it could not direct its employees to enter guest rooms at random or to remain therein to prevent possible misconduct when it lacked evidence that any misconduct was occurring or was contemplated by room occupants. Not only would such procedure deprive guests of room privileges for which they had paid, but, if carried to its logical conclusion, it would require that defendant, to be exonerated from any claim of negligence, employ and station a guard in every convention guest room of the hotel during the entire convention. As stated in Larson v. St. Francis Hotel, 83 Cal. App. (2d) 210, 213, 188 P. (2d) 513, 515:
“* * * The most logical inference * * * is that the chair was thrown * * * from a window. * * * this occurrence is not such as ordinarily does not happen without the negligence of the party charged, but, rather, one in which the accident ordinarily might happen despite the fact that the defendants used reasonable care and were totally free from negligence. To keep guests and visitors from throwing furniture out windows would require a guard to be placed in every room in the hotel, and no one would contend that there is any rule of law requiring a hotel to do thát.”
*3924. The situation here is distinguishable from that in Gore v. Whitmore Hotel Co. 229 Mo. App. 910, 83 S. W. (2d) 114, where convention guests had thrown placards,. feathers, telephone books, pillows, water-filled sacks, laundry bags, and like items from hotel windows for 3 days in a “regular deluge”; and from that in Pfeifer v. Standard Gateway Theater, Inc. 259 Wis. 333, 48 N. W. (2d) 505, where, for some time prior to plaintiff’s injury, objects were being thrown about a theater and the theater owner had done nothing to stop such misconduct.
5. The majority opinion recites a number of acts of misconduct on the part of the convention guests which seem to be entirely irrelevant to the issue to be determined. The fact that on a previous day, following the convention parade, beer bottles and beer cans had been left on the sidewalk adjacent to the Hennepin Avenue side of the hotel is not evidence that such articles had been thrown or dropped from the hotel windows. The same is true as to beer bottles and beer cans placed upon the third-floor fire escape on the day prior to the accident. Evidence of objects being dropped or thrown from the hotel on two or three isolated occasions is far from evidence of a deluge which might require prompt and positive preventative measures by a hotel proprietor as in Gore v. Whitmore Hotel Co. 229 Mo. App. 910, 915, 83 S. W. (2d) 114, 117. An animal mascot in the hotel lobby and others on an upper floor of the hotel; broken glass on the sidewalk near the garage; and the firing of guns in the hotel lobby bear no relationship to defendant’s obligation to use reasonable care to prevent articles from being thrown from its upper windows. Evidence of wet carpets, broken chairs, broken screens, and soiled walls inside the hotel, all resulting from misconduct on the part of convention guests, is likewise totally unrelated to the issue to be determined here.
6. It is suggested that all such factors might support a finding of negligence based upon defendant’s failure to “properly police the premises” or to “furnish a sufficient number of servants to afford reasonable protection.” As pointed out above, to satisfy such a requirement would impose upon a hotel owner the obligation of stationing a guard in each room in which a convention guest was quartered so that its occupants might be kept under constant surveillance day and night. *393Such is not the obligation which has been imposed upon innkeepers or hotel owners by any decision on this subject. As stated in Bruner v. Seelbach Hotel Co. 133 Ky. 41, 49, 117 S. W. 373, 376, where a hotel owner was absolved from liability for the action of a guest in throwing a beer bottle into the street:
“* * * It is only when they [the hotel owners] know, or by the exercise of ordinary care could know, that the guest’s conduct is such that injury will naturally result to others, that they have the right to eject the guest, or take precautions to control his conduct.”
The rule of conduct prescribed by the majority opinion would seem to eliminate any possibility of an innkeeper or hotel owner escaping the charge of negligence in connection with any injuries which might occur during a hotel convention regardless of any reasonable care or precautions taken by them.