Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 17.pdf/638

 NOTES OF RECENT CASES is held in Ligon v. Ligon, 87 Southwestern Re porter, 838, that a right of action against a rail road company for personal injuries sustained by a husband after he and his wife have separated with the intention of never again living together as man and wife and after proceedings for divorce were begun, is community property, one-half of which may be set apart to the wife on her obtain ing a divorce. INDIANS. (EMANCIPATION FROM FEDERAL CON TROL — SALES OP LIQUOR)

U. S. SUPREME COURT. In re Heff, 25 Supreme Court Reporter, 506 decides that an Indian allottee on receipt of his first patent under Act of February 8, 1887, must be deemed within the provision of section 6 of that act that upon the completion of such allot ments and the patenting of the lands to such allottees, each allottee shall have the benefit of and be subject to the laws of the state where he resides. This holding is based xipon the fact that every allottee is made a citizen and that the issue of the final patent provided for by section 5 was to be delayed for twenty-five years when it was to be issued to the first patentee, or his heirs. The case arose on habeas corpus to secure the re lease of a person convicted of selling liquor to an Indian, and it is held that inasmuch as imder the act mentioned, an allottee is a citizen of the United States and of the state in which he re sides, the sale of liquor to him cannot be made a crime under the federal laws when a sale to any other citizen of the state would not be an offense. It was also contended that although the United States might not have power as a police regula tion to punish the sale of liquor within a state by one citizen to another, it had that power if the purchaser was an Indian because of the provisions of Constitution, article i, section 8, empowering Congress to reg.ilate commerce with foreign na tions, among the several states and with the Indian tribes. In answer to this it is in effect decided that the power" to so regulate commerce, while extending to commerce between white men and Indians as individuals, ceases when the Indian becomes a citizen of th? United States and of the state in which he resides and does not continue ad infinituin merely because a person has Indian blood in his veins. INNKEEPERS. (LiEN — PROPERTY OP THIRD PERSON IN POSSESSION OP GUEST) N. Y. SUP. CT., APP. Div. IST DEPT. In Horace Waters & Co. v. Gerard, 94 New York Supplement. 702, the New York Supreme Court commits itself to a holding which, it seems,

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is a trifle in advance of the general current of authority on this question. It is there held that a hotel keeper who receives a guest and furnishes her board and lodging from day to day, without any special contract as to time or the price to be paid, is entitled to enforce an innkeeper's lien on a piano. brought into the hotel by the guest, though the piano was bought by the guest on credit under a contract stipulating that the title was to remain in the seller until the price was paid, and though the guest left the hotel after, having leased rooms therein for a definite period at a definite rental, and without having paid for the piano. The holding seems to be on the theory that as there is nothing that requires any one to deliver to a guest in a hotel any property for the use of the guest, any one furnishing such a guest with property is presumed to do so With a knowledge of the law which gives to an inn keeper a lien upon the property brought by a guest into the hotel, and that a person thus fur nishing a guest with property for his use in the hotel voluntarily submits that property to a lien in favor of the innkeeper. The force of this hold ing outside of New York is impaired by a strong dissent by O'Brien, P. J., in which Patterson, J., concurs. This case represents the limit which the modern decisions have been approaching. Knowledge or ignorance on the part of the innkeeper that the goods brought by, or sent to, the guests are not his property has ceased to be the test; indeed, by such a test, the true owner might be divested of his property in his chattels by a thief who, un suspected, might put up at an inn with them in his possession — a result not shocking in former times, but repugnant to modern notions. More recently the matter has been approached by inquiring whether the true owner is not involved in the transaction, by voluntarily giving over possession to the guest either before he came to the inn or afterward; in either case, the owner may be said to give an implied authorization to the person who has the goods to deal with them in so ordinary a way as going to an inn, and to incur, thereby, the usual consequence, that if the innkeeper is not paid his bill, goods in the possession of the guest may be held by the landlord. For example, it is now definitely established that an innkeeper may detain the samples of commercial travelers for their bills, notwithstanding it is apparent that the title to them is in the employer upon the ground of this implied power, even if the employer has forbidden the employee to run up bills. The present case is but one step further in the same direction.