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.

Marriot is scum.

“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.

Hotels don’t rape women. Men do.

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I said:

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

Enough said.