Pabón Escabí v. Axtmayer
Pabón Escabí v. Axtmayer
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We must consider the novel question in this jurisdiction as to whether or not the owner of a hotel is liable for injuries sustained by one of his guests when the latter was attacked late at night in a hall of the hotel by two strangers who entered the hotel which customarily kept its main door open during the night without employing and maintaining a watchman or any other employee at the entrance, or in the office in the lobby of the hotel. Contrary to the holding of the trial court, the facts and circumstances which we turn to consider call for an affirmative solution.
According to the findings of fact of the trial court, which are supported by the evidence, Alfredo Pabón Escabí, appellant herein, checked in at 7:00 p.m. on January 22, 1957, in the hotel known by the name of Olimpo Court Apt. Hotel, in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and was assigned to room No. 38. The evidence further showed that upon noticing that the bed “was not made” he told appellee Axtmayer, owner of the hotel, as he left for a baseball game, that the bed “was not made” and that there were no pillows, and the latter promised that the maid would take care of that later. The maid testified that she tried to enter the room for that purpose, that she could not, left and did not return. The court says that “plaintiff returned to his hotel approximately at 1:30 a.m. of January 23, 1957 and parked his car in front of the hotel, noticing that at a short distance there were two hoodlums. During all the time he was on the sidewalk he was able to observe and did observe the hoodlums. Thereupon he opened the trunk of his car where he placed some personal
The trial court dismissed the complaint in this case, briefly, for two reasons, to wit: (1) in Axtmayer acting negligently upon failing to see that the bed in appellant’s
Appellant bases his petition for review on four grounds, to wit: that the trial court did not adhere to the law nor to the facts proved (1) in its interpretation of the duties of the innkeeper toward his guests; (2) in concluding that appellee Axtmayer was not negligent in failing to provide vigilance for the protection of his guests; (3) in holding that appellee could not reasonably foresee that one of his guests could be assaulted inside the hotel in which no disorders nor assaults on guests nor acts of violence had occurred, such conclusion being contrary to the foreseeability doctrine, and that the same could be said of its interpretation of the doctrines of “proximate cause” and “intervening cause”; and (4) in concluding “that it would be highly speculative to determine whether the presence of a watchman on the hotel premises . . . would have been sufficient to prevent the assault.”
The Innkeeper’s Act of 1955, which covers specifically establishments such as Olimpo Court Apt. Hotel in this case, imposes on innkeepers the duty to provide protection for persons and property, and provides that an innkeeper “shall in no case be liable to any guest for any loss or damages occurring . . . not attributable to the fault or negligence of the innkeeper.'” (10 L.P.R.A. §§ 711(a) and 714.) (Italics ours.) In this case it is therefore necessary to determine
For the purpose of determining whether Axtmayer was negligent in incurring the two omissions referred to, we must determine whether or not the injury to appellee was reasonably foreseeable. In Cruz Costales v. Commonwealth, 89 P.R.R. 102 (1963), citing Ginés v. Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, 86 P.R.R. 490 (1962), we said that the rule of foreseeability does not mean that the precise risk or the results should have been foreseen; that the essential factor is to be under the duty to foresee in a general way consequences of a particular type; and that liability does not depend upon whether, in the exercise of reasonable diligence, the very injury complained of was or should have been foreseen; that it is unnecessary that the defendant should have anticipated the very injury complained of or anticipated that it would have happened in the exact manner that it did. See, also, Baralt v. Commonwealth, 83 P.R.R. 268 (1961), and Weber v. Mejías, 85 P.R.R. 72 (1962).
In Goose v. Hilton Hotels, 79 P.R.R. 494, 498, 499 (1956), we held that an innkeeper is not an insurer of the safety of his guests. The duty to protect them imposed by law extends only to the exercise of reasonable care for their protection.
Under the circumstances prevailing in this community,
The negligence of appellee Axtmayer having been established, we must determine whether such negligence was the legal cause of the injuries suffered by appellant. Judg
In order to determine whether appellee’s omission is the cause in fact of the injury sustained by appellant, we must ask ourselves whether such injury would have been caused in the absence of appellee’s omission. If the answer is in the negative, the causal relation between the omission and the injury is established. However, in the case under consideration this question cannot be answered categorically since we do not know, as stated by the trial court, whether a watchman would have prevented the admittance of the malefactors to the hotel. In this case we decide the problem of causation in fact on the basis of what in all probability might have occurred, and to that effect we conclude that it is most probable that the injury in question would have been prevented if there had been a night watchman or attendant at the entrance of the hotel. Lee v. National League Baseball Club of Milwaukee, 89 N.W.2d 811 (Wis. 1958); George C. Herget, Negligence, Liability of Proprietor of Place of Amusement for Injury to Patrons Caused by Act of Third Persons, 19 La. L. Rev. 890, 895 (1959); Mark L. Lamken, Torts: Negligence: Duty of an Operator of a Place of Amusement to Protect Patrons Against Acts of Third Persons, 6 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 494, 496; Krause, Negligence Duty of Care — Liability of Owner of Place of Amusement for Injury to Spectator Caused by Act of Third Person, 56 Mich. L. Rev. 137 (1957); Sample v. Eaton, 302 P.2d 431 (Cal. 1956); Harper & James, supra at 1113-15; 2 Restatement of Torts, § 432; Prosser, Proximate Cause in California, 38 Calif. L. Rev. 369, 381 (1950).
There remains for determination the amount of the injuries sustained by appellant. The record shows that as a result of the assault of which appellant was victim, he received injuries on the neck and several parts of the head which rendered him unconscious and, consequently, caused his fall and profuse external hemorrhage. He was hospitalized suffering from acute pains on the whole body, particularly in the head, neck and eyes, since early in the morning of January 23, 1957. He was hospitalized from that date until February 5 of the same year, and afterwards remained in bed in his home without being able to work owing to the consequences of such blows until the last day of August 1957. He experienced pains in the neck, the head and the body; he fainted when walking, being compelled to remain
For the reasons stated, the judgment rendered in this case on March 17, 1960, will be reversed and another rendered instead sustaining the complaint and ordering appellees to pay to appellant the sum of $9,482 for damages, plus the costs, including those of this appeal.
See the article by Professor Leon Green entitled Duties, Risks, Causation Doctrines, 41 Texas L. Rev. 42, 59 (1962), in which it is said that in negligence cases the courts have evolved and used a formula which presents four basic issues which the plaintiff must maintain: (1) causal relation between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s injury; (2) the duty of the defendant with respect to the victim’s injury; (3) the violation of the defendant’s duty with respect to the victim’s injury; and (4) the loss the plaintiff has suffered. See, also, the article by Professor Clarence Morris entitled Duty, Negligence and Causation, 101 U. Pa. L. Rev. 189 (1952).
According' to tables 11 and Y0 published in the Fifth Annual Report of the Administrative Director of the Courts, during the fiscal year 1956-1957 there were filed in the Court of First Instance of Puerto Rico a total of 16,236 cases for offenses against persons and 6,127 for offenses against property. Of the former, 14,838 were for assault and/or battery in different degrees and 83 for robbery. Of the latter, 503 were cases of burglary in the first degree and 114 of burglary in the second degree. As is to be presumed, San Juan registered an incidence greater than that of any other town as to criminal cases filed in that Court.
2 Harper & James, The Law of Torts 1145-51; Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts 141-42 (2d ed.).
The element of substantiality, as complementary to the causation in fact, should be distinguished from the scope which the authorities have attributed to the term proximate cause. The latter, on which the literature has been abundant, has not been uniformly defined and its treatment has many times been confusing. In those cases in which attempt has been made to specify the meaning of “legal proximity,” resort has been had to considerations which may be explained more clearly within the concept of negligence than within causal relation. In our effort to separate, at least analytically, these two elements of civil liability so that its understanding may be less difficult, we have deviated from the orthodox theory on proximate cause and adopted, for the sake of greater clarity, the suggestions of Professor Jeremiah Smith in connection with the substantiality or effectiveness of the causal relation, independently of everything which may be better grouped within the concept of negligence. (Smith, Legal Cause in Actions of Tort, 25 Harv. L. Rev. 103, 223, 303 (1912). We are aware that many authors criticize the position of Professor Smith as merely a distinct form of expressing the same as the term proximity (Morris, Duty, Negligence and Causation, 101 U. Pa. L. Rev. 189, 206 (1952)), but in our opinion such criticisms are the product of an erroneous understanding of the concept of substantiality. It is not correct, as stated for example by Morris, supra at p. 206, that every real cause connected with an event is also substantial, and that, therefore, all the factors which compose the chain of causation of a damage he substantial in the same degree if the damage had not been caused but for the intervention of any of them. It would not he reasonable to conclude that the fact that an automobile had sufficient gasoline in the tank to reach the scene of an accident is so substantially connected with the death of a passenger as the fact that a dog stopped on the road causing the driver to swerve and lose control of the vehicle. It is true that the death would not have occurred in the absence of either of these two circumstances; however, it is no less true that in order to attach more weight, more importance, more substantiality to the latter (the dog’s intervention) than to the former (sufficient gasoline), it is not necessary to pass on the question of negligence. The popularity of the test proposed by Professor Smith has been increasing since its adoption by “Restatement of Torts” in 1934, §§ 431-35. See Harper & James, supra at 1159.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.