Request By:
Hon. Stuart L. Adams, Jr.
2720 Citizens Plaza
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Joseph R. Johnson, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter to this office, you asked the Attorney General whether a hotel which offers its guests private limousine service to and from the airport is in violation of KRS 276.240(1) which states as follows:
. . . [N]o common carrier of passengers . . . or any officer or agent of such carrier, shall give passenger transportation within this state without charge, or for any consideration other than money paid in the usual way at the same charge open to all who desire to purchase, or at a reduced charge not common to the public. . . .
Numerous exemptions follow this statute but a hotel limousine service is not one of them.
The definition of "common carrier: is found in KRS 281.011 (3):
The term 'common carrier' means any person who holds himself out to the general public to engage in the transportation by motor vehicle of persons or property in intrastate or interstate commerce over regular routes, except that persons holding irregular route common carrier authority granted by the interstate commerce commission, taxicabs, and local cartage vehicles open and required to move over regular routes, and except that the holder of a nonprofit bus certificate shall not be construed to be a common carrier.
A "common carrier" is defined in 13 Am.Jur.2d Carriers § 2, pp. 560-561 as follows:
A common carrier may be defined, very generally, as one who holds himself out to the public as engaged in the business of transporting persons or property from place to place, for compensation, offering his services to the public generally. The dominant and controlling factor in determining the status of one as a common carrier is his public profession, or holding out, by words or by a course of conduct, as to the service offered or performed, with the result that he may be held liable for refusal, if there is no valid excuse, to carry for all who apply. The distinctive characteristic of a common carrier is that he undertakes to carry for all people indifferently, and he is regarded, in some respects, as a public servant.
This office is of the opinion that a hotel's private limousine offered to the hotel's guests for transportation to and from the airport is not a common carrier within the meaning of KRS 281.011(3). The hotel's limousine service is not offered to the general public and the hotel is not regularly engaged in to the general public and the hotel is not regularly engaged in the business of transporting members of the public. On the contrary, only hotel guests may avail themselves of the private limousine service if they so choose. Because the service is not available to the public at large, the hotel's limousines are private carriers as opposed to common carriers and are not in violation of KRS 281.011(3). See