Rommel v. Schambacher

Opinion,

Mr. Chief Justice Gordon:

From the evidence in this ease we gather the following facts: on the evening of the 9th of August, 1884, the plaintiff, William Rommel, a minor, entered the tavern of the defendant, Jacob Schambacher, and there found one Edward Flanagan: they both became intoxicated on liquor furnished them by Schambacher. Whilst the plaintiff was standing on the outside of the bar, engaged in conversation with the defendant, who was in the inside thereof, Flanagan pinned a piece of paper to Rommel’s back and set it on fire. The consequence was that Rommel’s clothes were soon in flames, and before the^y could be extinguished he was very badly injured. He brought the present suit to recover damages from the defendant for the injury thus sustained. The court below adjudged the facts as stated above to be'insufficient to sustain the plaintiff’s case, and directed a nonsuit. In this we think it made a mistake.

There is no doubt that the defendant, from the position he occupied, had a full view of the room outside of the bar, and did see, or might have seen, all that was going on in it. If, in. fact, he did see Flanagan setting fire to the plaintiff, and did not interfere to protect his guest from so flagrant an outrage, his responsibility for the consequences is undoubted. If, on the other hand, he was guilty of making Flanagan drunk, or if he came there drunk, and Schambacher knew that fact, he was bound to see that he did no injury to his customers. All this is a plain matter of common law and good sense, and does not depend on the act of 1854, or any other statute. Where one enters a saloon or tavern, opened for the entertainment of the public, the proprietor is bound to see that he is properly protected from the assaults or insults, as well of those who are in his employ, as of the drunken and vicious men whom he may choose to harbor.

To illustrate the principle here stated we need go no farther than the case of the Pittsburgh & Connelsville R. Co. v. Pillow, 76 Pa. 510. In the case cited, a drunken row occurred on board one of the defendant’s cars, and during the quarrel a bottle was broken, and a piece of the glass struck the plaintiff, a peaceable passenger, in the eye and put it out; held, that the company was responsible for the injury thus done. In the opinion of this court the following language was used: “ The plaintiff lost his eye through the quarrel of a couple of drunken men, who should not have been permitted aboard the cars, or, if so permitted, should have been so guarded or separated from the sober and orderly part of the passengers that no injury could have resulted from their brawls.” If, then, a railroad company is liable for the conduct of drunken men who may chance to board its cars, much more the tavern-keeper who not only permits drunken men about his premises, but furnishes liquor to make them drunk, and who is thus instrumental in fitting them for the accomplishment of just such an insane and brutal trick as that disclosed by the evidence of the case iu hand.

The judgment of the court below is now reversed and a new venire ordered.