Liability of Hospitality Firms for Deaths On Premises: Recent Court Cases and Methods for Prevention
Proprietors and employees need to be prepared when deaths occur in hospital ity establishments. Lawsuits involving deaths-both homicides and accidents—are frequent. Innkeepers and restaurateurs are held to a standard of ordinary care, with innkeepers having around-the-clock responsibilities and restaurateurs having re sponsibility for much shorter periods of time. Water, fire, food, alcoholic beverages, and vehicles are among the most common causes of accidental deaths. The outcomes of some cases hinge upon what constitutes proximate cause of death. Wrongful death and survival claims are the bases for remedies in death cases. Practical measures for reducing the likelihood of deaths and ensuing legal problems pertain to security, accident prevention, policy adoption and implementation, record keeping, employee training, and insurance coverage.
Why Innkeepers Go to Court
This article reviews recent lawsuits involving hospitality operators and highlights the range of potential risks faced in today's litigious environment. Seven categories of issues are explored: compensation and innkeepers' lien, injury to third persons, relations with guests, regulation of innkeepers, loss and injury to property of guests, personal injury to guests, and, in instances where the innkeeper initiates litigation, defrauding the innkeeper. The best prescription for limiting liability and other legal exposure is establishing legally valid and clear policies, training and supervising employees who will implement and follow those policies, and being aware of potential risk. Cases involving employer-employee relationships are not considered in this article, as the peril to hotel operators arising from employment-related lawsuits is little different from other industries.
Williston on contracts
HE NEW edition of Williston on Contracts, the Restatement with its annotations (now including the Illinois annotations), and the study of the seal and consideration recently published by the New York Law Revision Commission are three indications of the stage which the comprehensive and critical study of contracts has reached. One need only mention the work of Llewellyn, Patterson, Corbin, Gardner, Page, Whittier, and Havighurst, among others, to be reminded of the talent and industry which are at work in this field. The new edition follows the old closely. There are interesting new observations on the Restatement and such new uniform laws as the Written Obligations Act and the Joint Obligations Act. The collection of authorities is of course brought down to date, and references to law reviews added. Professor Rheinstein has furnished valuable new contributions on the continental European law. The general theory of the work is, however, as is natural, similar to the theory of the first edition; and elements of this theory are the subject of the present observations. It would be impertinent for a student of Mr. Williston, in the position of the writer, to praise his work. As one of a limited number of American classics, it is of course superior to ordinary praise. At the same time, as Samuel Butler has observed, the true Christian must be ready to leave everything for Christ's sake, even Christ himself; and it is the mark of a great teacher to stimulate his students' efforts to find new points of departure from his own teaching. Moreover, it may be useful for many of us to remind ourselves that the work of Mr. Williston is rich in suggestions for future work on the part of those who come after him. A continuous recognition that the events from offer to breach of contract constitute a kind of commercial tort would, it seems to the writer, help to clarify the discussion of contract problems. Deliberation (including assumption of risk), negligence and faultlessness, their accompanying conduct, and its consequent temporal harm, would thus naturally be compared with similar phenomena elsewhere. The practical tests of judicial treatment of contract problems would need to be reexamined. New light would be thrown on such matters as mistake, promissory