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137 Colo. 286

323 P.2d 1109

Cubbage v. Leep

Supreme Court of Colorado

Decided April 14, 1958

Supreme Court of Colorado · decided 1958-04-14

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“"A tavern keeper does not hold himself out to the public as the protector of those who may be patrons of his place of business. * * * The owner of a place like Cubs Inn owes to his guests or patrons the duty to use ordinary care and diligence to protect them while lawfully on the premises. In the instant case Leep had a right to rely on the implied promise of the proprietor that he would be protected from injury while lawfully on the premises insofar as the Cubbages could protect him by the exercise of reasonable care and diligence. Reasonable care and diligence is measured by what a person of ordinary prudence would or would not do under the same or similar circumstances." (Emphasis supplied)”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Pine v. Vigil

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1958-04-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 15 later decisions — most recently June 2011

15 state decisions

1001958196019701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Mr. Justice Day

¶1specially concurring.

¶2I concur in the majority opinion and in the result therein, but believe that in view of the record additional comments are in order.

¶3The record herein discloses that the argument and ensuing scuffle between the women, in which they fell on the floor and engaged in hair pulling, the altercation resulting in the ripping of the telephone from the wall and the other elements of the melee continued for a period of about fifteen to twenty minutes. During all this time the defendant in error was a willing spectator. Therefore, while it is the law that the owner of an establishment like “Cubs Inn” owes to his customers or patrons the duty of ordinary care and diligence to protect them, the patrons also have a duty to protect themselves when they can readily observe a situation getting out of hand. This is particularly true when they had full knowledge that the establishment was in charge of a lone woman. Therefore the right that Leep had to rely on the implied promise of the proprietor that he would be protected from injury while lawfully on the premises is of no avail to him when he had a reasonable time — in the present instance from ten to fifteen minutes — to absent himself from the vicinity of the struggle which eventually enveloped him. To put it another way, this record not only shows that the proprietor was not negligent but that Leep was injured by reason of his own folly in remaining to see “the fireworks.”

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