Hotels Have A Responsibility To Safety
Brian O Sutter
Premises Liability
In America, the laws of various states put a lot of emphasis on businesses exercising their legal duties. One of these duties is that if any business is open to the public, and receives customers, then that business is duty-bound to maintain a safe environment for the people it is inviting onto the property to conduct business with.Nowhere is this more important in the USA than in the hotel industry, where people are at their most vulnerable as they entrust hotels to provide an environment where they can sleep for the night while traveling. Sadly, not every country takes this responsibility as seriously as the USA does, sometimes with tragic consequences.
A Preventable Death In Malaysia
In August of 2019, an Irish family who went to Malaysia to enjoy a vacation in the tropics. They stayed an eco-resort less than 50 miles away from the capital and ended up waking one morning to find their teenage daughter missing and, eventually, dead. The family had taken a cottage with separate rooms for the parents and the children. As they got up, their 15-year-old daughter, Nora Anne Quoirin, was gone from the room, and her window was open.
Nora had a neurological disorder called holoprosencephaly, which has both physical and mental effects, leaving her intellectually vulnerable. Her body was found ten days later, naked, next to a stream about a mile away from the resort. Although Nora had no history of wandering off by herself and had a neurological condition that made her unlikely to act on her own, police ruled her death a result of exposure and decided no criminal activity had taken place. They decided she had climbed out the window on her own, gotten lost, stripped off her clothes, and died from the elements.
The Contradictory Clues
Even though Malaysian police claimed no further investigation was required, Nora’s parents had other ideas. Security at the eco-resort, for example, was extremely lax, with no guards, and the gate to the resort always being left open so that anyone could come into the resort without permission.
There was only one surveillance camera present on the grounds, at reception, meaning there was no way to check for intruders. Finally, and perhaps most damning, the cottage gate was open when Nora went missing, and the latch on the window was broken. Initially, the hotel claimed that the window, if locked, could only be unlocked and opened from the inside. Later investigation revealed that the lock could be unlocked from the outside as well.
Nora’s family was unconvinced that no criminal activity took place and was horrified that the police insisted no further investigation was necessary, or that the resort was at fault. They are now suing the resort for negligence and trying to open an inquest with the Malaysian government to reopen the case and conduct a criminal investigation.
The American Way
In the USA, hotels must strictly adhere to a legal doctrine known as premises liability. This means that a hotel is legally responsible for maintaining a safe environment, and if they find an issue that would compromise safety and choose to ignore it, they are acting negligently. Should someone be injured—or in the case of Nora, die—as a result of that negligence, they have broken the law and are financially responsible for any consequences that arise from that negligence.
In the tragic case of Nora, it is clear that there is evidence the hotel did not act responsibly, and that a criminal act victimizing Nora could very well have occurred. With no security, no gatekeeping, and a window that was broken, all resulting in a deceased girl several days later, it’s quite likely American police would not have arrived at the same conclusion Malaysian police did, and that a further investigation into both the death and the eco-resorts own security practices would have been conducted.
Don’t Let It Happen To You
If you stay in a hotel in the USA, or even a “gig economy” solution like Airbnb, know your rights and know that any place that offers short-term residency in exchange for money has a basic legal obligation to ensure the safety of you and your family while you are staying there. Any failure to remedy a problem that can endanger you or your family is premises negligence and the owners and managers of the property are responsible for what happened.
If you can prove what happened, with evidence that can be submitted in court, you should talk to an attorney experienced in premises liability. This can be anything from slipping and falling due to an improperly lit stairwell or being victimized by crime because the security measures that should have been in place weren’t working correctly, even though the property was aware of the defect.