Abuse lawyer, Elizabeth Duncan, looks at your legal options if you are assaulted while staying in a hotel.
The media have highlighted serious concerns about guest safety in hotels. This includes incidents at the budget chain Travelodge, where instead of receiving the basic but reliable overnight accommodation expected, guests have encountered a stranger in their room.
Lone female guests have been sexually assaulted after hotel reception staff handed keys to men falsely claiming to know the occupant. It raises huge concerns about guest safety in hotels, especially for women traveling alone.
If this happens to you, what legal options do you have?
Where a crime has been committed, a report to the police is an obvious first step to take. However, you also have options for taking civil action to seek recognition of what occurred and compensation to aid recovery and access to treatment.
While you would have grounds to bring a civil claim directly against the attacker, many individuals who commit such offenses often lack the financial resources to satisfy a court judgment. The alternative is therefore to take legal action against the hotel that handed over your room key to a complete stranger.
Hotels are automatically responsible for the criminal actions of their employees if a criminal act is committed in the course of their employment, and that act was closely connected with the employee’s legitimate work activities. However, that principle does not apply to non-employees. But hotels do owe a general duty of care to their customers, and if they do not take reasonable steps to protect guests from a foreseeable risk, they can be held legally responsible for the harm that follows.
In a case of sexual assault following unauthorised access to a hotel room, legal claims are not just about holding the company liable for the assault itself, but also about failures in security, safeguarding or systems that created the situation in which the assault was able to happen, and where such an attack was a foreseeable outcome of their failure to take care when handing out room keys. If proper procedures for controlling access, issuing keys, or verifying identity would have prevented an assault, a civil claim is likely to succeed.
Another option is to make an application to the government’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) Scheme. This scheme offers limited financial compensation to victims of crime where various strict eligibility criteria are met.
How we can help if you have been assaulted in a hotel
Contact our specialist team for a free consultation about bringing a legal action on a no win, no fee basis.
While compensation does not undo the damage caused by the assault, for many victims making a claim can act as recognition for the failings and wrongdoing of others, and provide much needed closure.