The Law: Innkeepers, Beware

Stephen Klim, a sometime house painter, had worked out a tidy arrangement with the manager of San Francisco's Junior Tar Hotel. Klim would pay the $10 weekly rent in cash, if he had it. If not, he would paint a room or two. Claiming that the painter had fallen in arrears, the hotel padlocked his room, which contained all his personal belongings. Klim sued, seeking his goods plus damages and contending that he had been relieved of his property without due process of law.

The Junior Tar quickly restored his personal effects. In the U.S. district court where the suit was tried, Klim then won a greater victory. Judge Gerald Levin ruled that California's 95-year-old Innkeeper's Lien Law was unconstitutional. Tracing the statute back to its antecedents in the common law of medieval England, the judge held that the times no longer allow a hotel the right to deprive a nonpaying guest of his property without due process. The statute, Levin said, "effectively clothes the California innkeeper with the badge of the sheriff and the robes of the judge." Since the decision may be followed in other states that have similar laws, hotel owners across the nation might do well to take Judge Levin's advice: Make guests pay in advance.