PART III OBLIGATIONS OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT CHAPTER XI. JUSTIFICATION FOR REFUSING SERVICE. Grounds for Refusing Service. REGINA v. SPRAGUE. 63 Justice of the Peace, 233 (Eng.). 1899. At the Surry Quarter Sessions, held at Kingston-on-Thames, before Mr. George Cave, chairman, and a full bench of magistrates, Martha Jane Sprague, the wife of Sidney Sprague, was indicted for that she, being the keeper of a common inn for the reception and accommodation of travelers, called the Hautboy Hotel, at Ockham, in the county of Surry, did, on the 27th of October, 1898, without sufficient cause and not regarding her duty as an innkeeper, wilfully and unlawfully neglect and refuse to supply Florence Wallace Harberton, wife of Viscount Harberton, of 108 Cromwell Road, London, then being a traveler, with victuals, which she then required, and for which she was willing to pay. The defendant pleaded "Not guilty." Avory and Lord Coleridge addressed the jury. The chairman, in summing up, said that an innkeeper could not refuse to supply a traveler with food and lodging without some lawful excuse. Here Mrs. Sprague did not say that she had a right to dictate to Lady Harberton what dress she was to wear. Therefore the question whether ladies should or should not wear "rational dress" was not in dispute. An innkeeper could not refuse to supply food because of the particular shape of the dress of the traveler. The only question therefore was whether there was a refusal to supply food in a decent and proper place. The innkeeper could select the room provided it was a decent and proper room. Nor, in his opinion, was a guest entitled to have a room exactly to his or her taste. The jury must judge by the requirement of ordinary and reasonable persons. The learned chairman then referred to the evidence, and asked the jury to consider whether the bar parlor was a decent and proper room for a guest to have lunch in and, further, whether the bar parlor was not to all intents and purposes part of the hotel. The jury retired to consider their verdict, and, after a short deliberation, they returned a verdict of "Not guilty." Service Promoting Immoral Business. GODWIN v. CAROLINA TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 136 N. C. 258, 48 S. E. 636 (N. C.). 1904. CLARK, C. J. This is an application for a mandamus to compel the defendant to put a telephone, with necessary fixtures and appliances, in the dwelling house of the plaintiff in the town of Kinston, and admit her to all the privileges accorded to other subscribers to the telephone exchange operated by the defendant in said town. It was admitted by the plaintiff that "she is a prostitute, and keeps a bawdy house within the corporate limits of the town of Kinston, and desires to have said telephone put in said bawdy house." The court being of opinion that the plaintiff was not entitled to a mandamus for such purpose, the plaintiff took a non-suit and appealed. It is argued that a common carrier would not be authorized to refuse to convey the plaintiff because she keeps a bawdy house. Nor is the defendant refusing her a telephone on that ground, but because she wishes to place the telephone in a bawdy house. A common carrier could not be compelled to haul a car used for such purpose. If the plaintiff wished to have the phone placed in some other house used by her, or even in a house where she resided, but not kept as a bawdy house, she would not be debarred because she kept another house for such unlawful and disreputable purpose. It is not her character, but the character of the business at the house where it is sought to have the telephone placed, which required the court to refuse the mandamus. In like manner, if a common carrier knew that passage was sought by persons who are traveling for the execution of an indictable offense, or a telegraph company that a message was tendered for a like purpose, both would be justified in refusing; and certainly when the plaintiff admits that she is carrying on a criminal business in the house where she seeks to have the telephone placed the court will not, by its mandamus, require that facilities of a public nature be furnished to a house used for that business. For like reason a mandamus will not lie to compel a water company to furnish water, or a light company to supply light, to a house used for carrying on an illegal business. The courts will enjoin or abate, not aid a public nuisance. The further consideration of this matter is not required on this application for a mandamus, but should be upon an indictment and trial of the plaintiff for the violation of law so brazenly avowed by her. No error. Protection From Diseased Persons. 145 Ala. 395, 40 So. 398. 1906. Action by Max Krauss against the Pullman Company for breach of contract contained in a ticket issued by excluding him from its car. DENSON, J. The defendant filed several pleas in answer to the complaint. Demurrers were sustained to those numbered 4, 5, and 6, respectively. The fourth plea sets up the defense that when the plaintiff presented himself at the defendant's car for passage the conductor and passengers who had bought berths and space in said car thought that the plaintiff had a "contagious and loathsome disease"; that his hands and arms were wrapped in cloth, and that there were eruptions upon a part of his body that were visible; that a number of passengers on the said car objected to plaintiff being allowed to ride thereon, and the conductor of said car would not allow him to take passage thereon because of the appearance of the said disease; and it is averred that the plaintiff did have a loathsome and contagious disease, to wit, syphilitic eczema. The fifth plea set up a rule of the defendant company against carrying persons infected with a contagious disease, and it is averred plaintiff had such a disease, to wit, syphilitic eczema. The sixth plea is in effect the same as the fourth plea, with the additional averment that at the time plaintiff purchased his ticket he did not communicate to the agent who sold him the ticket the fact that he had a contagious disease, and that the agent did not know that the plaintiff had a contagious disease. The right of a person to a berth or passage on a sleeping car is not an unlimited right. But it is subject to such reasonable regulation as the defendant had prescribed for the due accommodation of passengers and for the safety and comfort of passengers. Sleeping car companies are not bound to admit persons as passengers on its cars who are guilty of gross and vulgar habits of conduct, or who make disturbances on board, and, a fortiori, persons who are afflicted with contagious or infectious disease, so that there would be a probability of other passengers contracting the disease with which said afflicted person was suffering. As is said in Hutchinson on Carriers, with respect of common carriers: "As, therefore, the common carrier holds himself out as the carrier of only such goods as are in a fit condition to be carried, and may, as has been seen, notwithstanding his public profession, refuse to accept such as are unfit to be carried on account of their kind, the unsuitable manner in which they are prepared for transportation, or the insecurity or damage which they may occasion to the goods of other shippers or to the carrier himself, so the carrier of passengers, however public he may hold himself out or be engaged as such carrier, may refuse to accept persons offering themselves as passengers who are unfit to be carried, either because such person, from bad character, from being afflicted by contagious disease, from apprehended evil designs, either upon the carrier himself or his passengers, or from drunkenness or insanity, would be unfit associates for them or unsafe for the carrier." Hutchinson on Carriers (2d Ed.), § 540; Nevin v. Pullman Palace Car Co., 106 Ill. 222, 46 Am. Rep. 688; Wood's Ry. Law, 1035; Putnam v. Railroad Co., N. Y. 108, 14 Am. Rep. 190; Paddock v. A. T. & S. F. R. R. Co. (C. C.), 37 Fed. 841, 4 L. R. A. 231. * Persons Under Physical Disability. ZACHERY v. MOBILE & OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY. 75 Miss. 746, 23 So. 434. 1898. WHITFIELD, J., delivered the opinion of the court: The demurrer to the special plea should have been sustained. The former opinion of this court stated this. The blind man in this case "had, at the times referred to in the declaration, when he applied for tickets and permission to travel on defendant's cars, as much skill and ability to travel without help or attendants as any blind man could have. The declaration avers that though blind, he was otherwise qualified to travel on the railroad cars, and, in fact, had traveled for several years constantly on appellee's railroad without objection. The demurrer to this declaration was overruled, and the present demurrer to the special plea presents the same objections, and, of course, should have been sustained. It is not every sick or crippled or infirm person whom a railroad regulation can exclude, but one so sick or so crippled or so infirm as not to be able to travel without aid. And so it is not every blind person, but one who, though blind, is otherwise incompetent to travel alone on the cars. Otherwise, we would be compelled to hold that one suffering from sickness, no matter how slight, or one who had lost an arm or leg, or one, no matter how active physically, and no matter how expert a traveler, though being blind, could be shut out by such a rule. And this ought not to be, and cannot be, sound law. We are asked to hold that a regulation that no blind person whatever shall travel unaccompanied by an assistant, no matter how skillful or expert a traveler he may have been, or may be, and no matter how perfectly qualified in every other respect to travel on cars unaccompanied, is a reasonable rule. This cannot be sound. Each case must depend on its own facts, and the reasonableness of the refusal to sell the blind person a ticket must, on principle, depend not on a universal, arbitrary and undiscriminating rule like this one, but on the capacity to travel unaccompanied, of the particular blind person, as shown by the proof on that point in his case. Judgment reversed, demurrer to special plea sustained and remanded. |