IMPORTANT JUDGMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 203, 29 July 1941, Page 6

IMPORTANT JUDGMENT.

LIABILITY OF PROPRIETORS

(Press Assn) WELLINGTON. July 29

In tho light of judgment given by the Magistrate (Mr Luxford) to-day, proprietors of private hotels may find themselves in a difficult position in the case of the property 0 f guests being stolen on the premises. There was a widespread belief, he said, that the common law liability of an innkeeper attached only to licensed publicans, in other words that houses licensed under the Licensing Act, 1908, were the only common inns in New Zealand. Whether a place was a common inn or not was always a question of fact. Once a person held out that he was ready and willing to receive travellers, lie became liable, as an innkeeper, to every guest whose property was lost or damaged while staying at the inn if the person was a traveller when he was received, and maintained that status at the time the loss occurred. Mr Luxford commented that, whatever was the reason that caused the Legislature in 1881 to take away from innkeepers other than licensees the protection afforded by the Act, it could not apply to-day. Many private hotels now existed in all parts of the Dominion and were indispensable to the travelling public. An increase in the nunil>er of licensed hotels was, to all intents and purposes, a legal impossibility, except in districts where “restoration” was carried, consequently the number of private hotels was likely to increase. Yet, if his understanding of the law was correct, the proprietor of a private hotel might be a keeper of a common inn, but in respect of his guests’ goods was without the protection which the Legislature had given to licensed publicans. Neither had he the right to sell goods over which lie might acquire an innkeeper’s lien. The case was one in which £-1-1 Gs Gd was claimed for goods stolen from a bedroom, and judgment for plaintiff for £35 was given with costs.