LIEN OP LIVERY-STABLE KEEPERS. 453 



enforce his lien or otherwise assert his legal rights within 

 a reasonable time and not needlessly permit damages to 

 grow.^^* 



109. Innkeepers — The exact extent of the liability of an 

 innkeeper, apart from statutory law, has been a much mooted 

 question, the decisions on the subject being quite irrecon- 

 cilable. On the one hand he has been held to be, Hke a 

 common carrier, an insurer of the goods placed in his charge 

 and absolutely responsible for their safe-keeping except in 

 case of loss or injury by act of God or by the public enemy 

 or by the negligence of the guest himself or his servants. 

 Under this rule the innkeeper is liable where the loss results 

 from a fire without his fault or from robbery or burglary.^^^ 



On the other hand, the rule as to liability has been thus 

 stated by Judge Story in his work on Bailment: "By the 

 Roman Law, if shipmasters, innkeepers and stable-keepers 

 did not restore what they had received to keep safe, they were 

 held liable; and this is the law of Continental Europe. . . . 

 But innkeepers are not responsible to the same extent as com- 

 mon carriers. The loss of the goods of a guest while at an 

 inn will be presumptive evidence of negligence on the part 

 of the innkeeper or of his domestics. But he may, if he can, 

 repel this presumption by showing that there has been no 

 negHgence whatsoever, or that the loss is attributable to the 

 personal negligence of the guest himself ; or that it has been 

 occasioned by inevitable casualty or by superior force." ^^^ 



'"-' Mason Stable Co. v. Lewis, i6 Misc. (N. Y.) 359. 



'"Lawson Bailm. § 76; Hulett v. Swift, 33 N. Y. 571; Russell v. Fagan, 

 7 Houst. (Del.) 389; Thickstun v. Howard, 8 Blackf. (Ind.) 535. 



""Story Bailm. §§ 464, 467, 472. See note by Schouler to 9th ed., 

 § 472, and also Browne Bailm. 80, where it is said: "In recent times this 

 necessity [i. e., of absolute liability] has almost entirely passed away, 

 at least in the older and orderly communities, and the ancient liability 

 has been by statutes in England and most of the United States reduced 

 to the exercise of a high degree of care, and the innkeeper is absolved 

 from the consequences of fire and of robbery without his fault." 



See, also, 11 Amer. & Eng. Encyc. of Law, 58, etc. 



