However, out of respect for the privacy of the victim and the expectations of the Court in the pending litigation, we are not at liberty to comment on the claims or defenses in this case.

So, it was only out of respect for the victim that Marriott outed her to her family and friends? R-i-g-h-t.

Anybody wanna buy a bridge?

“Hasn’t our society progressed beyond the point where the legal system will tolerate blaming a rape victim and her children for her rape and then attempting to shame and silence her by identifying her to previously unknowing friends, neighbors, and work associates?”
Obviously…not.

One thing for Marriot to say “that the attack was beyond their control.” That’s a legit position to take. But to say that the woman “was careless, negligent and “failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities.” S ounds like boilerplate in any negligence case – alleging comparative or contributory negligence. Not sure I have a real problem with this. Dragging the otehr people into it…………. hmmmm.

Marriot donates money to the Republican party. Don’t do business with Marriott and now that they blame the rape victim you have a more important reason not to do business with Marriott hotels.

Read our blog http://blog.democratz.org

You do know that the Marriot famly are LDS?

Really, are you surprised by their attacking a rape victim?

So the Stamford Marriott is saying that a woman who stays at their hotel with her kids is acting carelessly, negligently, and without exercising “due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities.”

OK. Got it.

Would the folks at the Stamford Marriott be so kind as to tell me if there are other Marriott hotels Mrs. Peterr and The Kid should avoid?

This is the sickest attempt at a legal defense I’ve ever heard of. And for God’s sake, I’d have thought something like this would happen in Texas or Alabama, not Connecticut.

I hope this woman takes every fucking penny they own when she sues them for this.

True to form. Marriott is a conservative enabler. Thinking people should think about staying elsewhere.

Can we assume that the hotel made sure that she had no health care attention after the “incident”? And , if she became pregnant, did the insurance company deny her care because it was a pre-existing condition? Which health insurance company owns the hotel? Is the security department run by Blackwater? Clearly the hotel and its legal counsel have no more good sense than they claim the woman has. Is the hotel represented by Alberto Gonzales?

The Marriot family has also been called out for having porn channels available in their hotel rooms. Well, business is business, I suppose, and family values are for your family.

But who among us is free of hypocrisy? Let him cast the first stone. To paraphrase a moderately well known community organizer.

This is the hotel chain, the business, not the family or the owners.

Book Salon upstairs with Douglas A. Blackmon’s Slavery By Another Name hosted by Tom Sugrue.

To “AngelsWake”, that this could only happen in TX or AL? You are more than naive. I live in TX, and had this happened here, we would have already executed an innocent hispanic for the crime. CT is no Camelot, either.

I’ll caution my female friends, if they’re planning to stay at a Marriott, to go heavily armed, and to cut loose on anyone that approaches within 20 feet. A hail of bullets is a great deterrent to rape.

Teddy is right that including a contributory negligence response in an answer to a negligent failure to protect case is, in effect, blaming the victim. As someone who use to represent rape victims in such cases, however, I know that such claims are part of the boilerplate that is part of an answer in all negligence claims.

This pleading was filed in the very early stages of litigation. Lawyers, both plaintiff’s and defendant’s, like to leave every possible door open at that point, because they really don’t know what the evidence will turn out to be in discovery. However, unless the plaintiff’s conduct was just crazy, a defense lawyer would hesitate to argue to a jury in a civil case (where the rapist is not on trial) that a rape victim was in some way responsible for her assault. That would be one-way ticket to a seriously pissed-off jury. So yes, it’s bad PR (not to mention morally pernicious!) to blame the victim here, but it would be highly unusual for that to be the actual defense at trial. That language in the defendant’s answer is the same language that appears in every answer to a negligence complaint, even those in which the facts turn out to be that the plaintiff couldn’t possibly be deemed to be at fault (e.g., a rear-end collision).

As to the argument that Marriott is playing dirty by subpoenaing some of the plaintiff’s associates, I’d have to see the actual court record to be sure of what I am about to say here (as would anyone else), but my guess is that these people were subpoenaed to determine if the plaintiff described the events that led up to the rape and the rape itself to her friends in some way that differs from what she has testified in discovery. This may seem invasive, but it was the victim’s choice to bring suit here. Much as I lean toward the plaintiff in these cases, it would be bizarre if the defendant weren’t able to defend itself in this way. I don’t know if a court order not to identify the plaintiff was entered, and if one was, then the defendant’s conduct may have violated same. However, it’s pretty difficult to subpoena someone to testify and to bring with them all documents relating to conversations they have had with the plaintiff if you don’t state the plaintiff’s name. Also, while many states have rape shield laws that protect the identities of rape victims in criminal cases, this being a civil case voluntarily brought by the victim, a rape shield statute would not apply.

In short, compared with the kind of defenses I have seen mounted in negligent security cases where the injury is rape, Marriott’s actions as reported in these blog posts do not seem unusual or offensive. I have seen cases where defendants attempt to go into details of the victim/plaintiff’s sex life in pretrial discovery. That kind of inquiry clearly is intended to intimidate and discourage litigation, because it is so clearly inadmissible in court. If it turns out that that is the route that Marriott’s lawyers are taking, then I would certainly join in the chorus of those who find their behavior repellent. From what facts are reported here, though, I think their behavior falls far short of deserving that kind of criticism.

I hope people will take a moment to click on the last link in the post above and let Marriott know their opinion, and their intention with regard to future travel, in the easy comment form the company provides.

Regardless of the legalese that may justify this response, it is a heinous blame-the-victim reply and should be condemned by all right-thinking people.

This is Just WRONG on so many levels it is sickening!
How you can ever blame the Victim is wrong!! And it has been used oh so many times by the defense attorneys to get their client off! This should be outlawed Federally. No prior information about the victim should be allowed in the proceeding NONE!

Legality or not, this is mormon values. My wife and I will seriously consider not patronizing Marriott again.

No more Marriott for me unless they publically apologize for this unnecessary and insulting act.

Marriott has the professional [non-]apology down pat. It says all the right things – and means none of them. Those with hotel dollars to spend would do well to spend them elsewhere.

I have avoided giving a dime to Marriott for decades, and continue to do so.

Why would any sane person give their money to the horseshit that is Mormonism?

Thanks for picking this story up. Several of our readers have gotten the same form letter from Marriott and I think it is important to note that nowhere in that letter do they use the word rape.

Lucinda Marshall, Director
Feminist Peace Network
http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org

Well, shucks, Lieberman in happening in Connecticut.

I think just about every hotel chain would have said the same thing.

I’m just curious – does anyone know in what way she claims the hotel was negligent/at fault?

And it’s also noteworthy that they do not sincerely apologize either, as earlofhuntingdon previously noted. They give lip service to noting the crime but do nothing toward correcting the “mistaken impression” by doing the right thing.

“…A downtown hotel being sued by a woman raped at gunpoint in its parking garage is claiming she was careless…etc.”

And who do you think owns and controls and directs the hotel and restaurant chain? Lepricons?

I just sent them this:

I have often stayed at Marriot Hotels when I travel, which I do frequently.

After reading about how your attorneys have put up a “Blame The Victim” defense in the rape case at the Stamford Marriot I will no longer be patronizing any of your or your Corporate Partners establishments.

I will be finding other lodging in the future and urging all of my family, friends, and business associates to do the same.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Sincerely,

Let’s see how they respond.

How dare this misguided woman smear the good name of an all-American corporation? Corporations have “personhood” with feelings too!

I was already avoiding Marriot Hotels due to their links to conservative Republicans and Mitt Romney. This horrific story just cemented my choice.

Marriott did not rape her. Hotel garages cannot and do not have 100% security. The world is not rape-proof. The woman is trying to make probably MILLIONS of bucks on her rape. She is so anxious to dip her biscuits in hot corporate gravy and wants to do it anonymously. We all pay those millions to the money whore tort maniacs like her. Boo effing hoo.

Conservative trolls are so easy to spot: you guys are always the ones who go screaming for a lawyer when your car gets dinged in the parking lot.

Tell us for real: you’re Kenneth Gladney, aren’t you?

I will not ever visit a hotel that uses the excuse it’s the woman’s fault she was raped.

I have often said that even if a woman ran down the street naked no one has a right to touch or rape her. There is no such thing as being at fault for your own rape.

I wonder if the number of rapes have went up since Dole started those viagra ads on tv years ago? It sickens me that I cannot watch many channels including news channels when my grandkids are over because every few minutes ads for viagra and penal enlargement bombard the tv. Also, are rapist drug tested and given longer sentences if they are on viagra type meds during a rape assault?

Hotels don’t rape women. Men do. I think women should (if they have no policerecord) ALL carry concealed pistols. It would make rapists think twice and even up the score. So-called feminists’empower’ themselves with lawyers – they should empower themwelves with .38’s.

what do “having porn channels” available in rooms have to do with their treatment of this rape victim?? are they denying she was raped? is their a suspect and a prosecution? and just HOW could this woman, ( and her children) have “taken better precautions” against forcible rape, in the fucking parking garage, of the marriot hotel she was staying in?? by not staying in a marriot hotel. Attention women and famillies! stay at the marriot at your peril! again, marriot hotels are dumps full of rapists, and the situation is so bad, that the marriot staff cannot answer for the safety of their guests! stay away from marriot

or even assault rifles. frankly, women should be fully armed at all times. any women who isnt packing a .44 magnum deserves whatever she gets, right?

You said:

Hotels don’t rape women. Men do.

.
I said:

I will not ever visit a hotel that uses the excuse it’s the woman’s fault she was raped.

Enough said.

No, but rapists do.

Another page from the Ann Coulter playbook: The 9/11 widows are in it for the money, the rape victim is riding the gravy train, etc.

“Possibly non-existent” deity forbid you should be a victim of a violent crime, but if you do, don’t expect any sympathy from me.

And to suggest that starting a gun-battle when you are with your children would be a GOOD thing is totally irresponsible. Those that suggest that an armed society is a polite society are apparently oblivious to history.

I got the exact same canned non-reponsive response.

Marriot is scum.

In response to #25 above, I have not seen the complaint, but in general, business owners owe people who are on their premises for broadly-defined business purposes owe them a duty of care to protect them from reasonably foreseeable harm. The plaintiff’s general claims in this type of litigation are that 1) the hotel knew or reasonably should have known of a danger posed to people lawfully on its premises; and 2) the hotel carelessly failed to take reasonable steps to prevent the plaintiff from coming to harm, and 3) that the hotel’s carelessness was a substantial cause of the harm sustained.

To prove the first part, plaintiffs generally try to show that there had been other, similar assaults at the premises (or similar premises) in the past and that the hotel knew or should have known about them. A hotel in a high-crime area, for example, may have a different duty of care than a hotel in a lower-crime area.

To prove the second part, plaintiffs focus on various things, including the architecture and design of the premises. Why do you think you see so many glass walls and cameras in parking garage elevators? It’s because so many plaintiffs successfully argued that hotels knew that people were getting attacked in the elevators and that it would have been reasonable for them to lessen that risk by installing cameras and glass walls but that they did not do so. Depending on circumstances, other facts may become relevant here, such as whether the hotel provided security patrols appropriate to the risk environment, whether the hotel offered people escorts to their cars, whether the hotel installed panic button alarms, etc. Hotels are not absolute guarantors of people’s safety; if a hotel takes reasonable steps to secure its premises and a rape occurs anyway, the defendant wins.

To prove the third part, the plaintiff has to prove that the rape would not have happened had the defendant properly secured the premises and that it was reasonably foreseeable that such an attack might occur.

Sorry for all the legalese.

One thing I didn’t mention in my original post (#15) is that it is quite typical in such cases for courts to grant a protective order requested by the plaintiff that forbids the defendant from introducing evidence that somehow suggests the victim “asked” to be raped. I once represented a stripper who was raped in her apartment by a man who got in because the landlord never fixed some broken locks. I knew that people’s attitudes toward strippers being what they were, I could do one of two things: ask the judge to tell the jury not to hold her occupation against her, or simply forbid all evidence of her occupation at trial. I opted for the latter.

About the duty of care/knowing: didn’t Marriot get sued by another woman (or a man or a couple, I can’t quite recall) a few years ago for a violent attack inside one of their properties?