GUESTS’ PROPERTY IN PRIVATE HOTELS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 177, 30 July 1941, Page 7

GUESTS’ PROPERTY IN PRIVATE HOTELS

LIABILITY OF PROPRIETORS LEGAL POINT DECIDED (Press Assn.) Wellington July 29. In the light of a judgment given by Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., to-day. proprietors of private hotels may find themselves in a difficult position when the property of guests is stolen on the premises. There was a widespread belief, Mr. Luxford said, that the common law liability of the 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 the place was a common inn or not was always a question of fact.

Once r. person held out that he was ready and willing to receive travellers he 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 lime the loss happened. 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 of 1886, it could not apply to-day. Many private hotels now existed in all parts of the Dominion and were indispensable to the travelling public. The increase in the number 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 th? law was correct, the proprietor of a private hotel might be the keeper of a common inn, but in respect of guests’ goods was without the protection which the legislature had given to licensed publicans. Neither had he the right to sell goods over which he might acquire an innkeeper’s lien.

The case was one in which £44 6s 6d was claimed for goods stolen from a bedroom and judgment for plaintiff for £35 was given, with costs.