Safety might not seem like something you’ll need to worry about when staying at a Ritz-Carlton hotel. After all, a reasonable level of safety isn’t even an amenity; it’s a legal requirement. Hotels of all price points have a duty to anticipate likely threats to guests and take appropriate action to address them. A brand known for providing the highest of high-end luxury and service shouldn’t have any trouble covering these bare basics.
Even luxury hotels do sometimes fall short, however, and Ritz-Carlton guests face many of the same hazards as guests of any other brand. The celebrity culture surrounding the Ritz-Carlton can even present dangers of its own.
Below, we’ll go over common reasons you might need to sue a Ritz-Carlton. If at any point you would prefer to speak directly with a lawyer, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.
There have been several slip-and-fall accidents at Ritz-Carlton hotels over the years, but one of the most recent (and famous) incidents was the one that resulted in the death of Bob Saget.
Saget was found dead in his room at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida in January of 2022. An autopsy revealed that he had died of a brain hemorrhage brought on by blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Investigators believe he fell and hit his head somewhere in his room and then went to bed without realizing that his injuries were life-threatening.
No details were ever released on exactly where or how the fall likely occurred.
Like most hotel brands, Ritz-Carlton has also had some trouble with pool safety. In December of 2021, a 5-year-old girl was found unresponsive in the pool of the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, Illinois. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Something very similar happened about a decade earlier at the Ritz-Carlton in Marana, Arizona. The 2-year-old girl involved in that incident survived, however, thanks to CPR from a bystander who happened to be a medical student.
Quick action by a well-trained individual can often be the difference between life and death in a drowning situation, but unfortunately, that first scare in Marana was not enough to convince the Ritz-Carlton brand to make lifeguard presence standard at all of its pools.
That same Marana pool was also the site of a different serious accident in 2020. That time, a deck umbrella blew into the pool and struck a father and child. Both of them required hospital care.
If you have also been injured or lost a loved one due to an accident on Ritz-Carlton property, a lawyer can help you determine whether the hotel could have done more to provide you with a safe environment.
Ritz-Carlton hotels have been at the center of multiple incidents involving the mishandling of hazardous materials.
In 2009, a worker at the Ritz in Sarasota, Florida ended up in the hospital after incorrectly mixing pool chemicals and releasing toxic gas. And, just a couple years ago, the brand was forced to pay over half a million dollars in a settlement over the illegal storage and disposal of “flammable, reactive, toxic, and corrosive substances” at its California locations.
This particular incident, however, took place in 2010, when a buildup of potentially deadly carbon monoxide sickened multiple guests and prompted a full evacuation of the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans, Louisiana. The hotel promptly fired one of its engineers, claiming that the poisoning was due to leaks in the exhaust shafts that he had designed.
The engineer sued the hotel for breach of contract — specifically breach of the clause in his employment contract forbidding termination without a fair investigation.
In the trial that followed, it turned out that the engineer had once reported the hotel’s general manager for “borrowing” furniture from the hotel for use in his home. The engineer had never been disciplined at work before that point, and afterward, he filed a complaint with HR, alleging a sudden deluge of retaliatory discipline and harassment.
A boiler inspector testified that he had discovered and reported a life-threatening malfunction in the boilers themselves, before the accident. The engineer had relayed these findings, but management allegedly failed to approve the necessary work to correct the problem.
There was never any evidence that the duct design, or anything else that fell within the scope of the engineer’s duties, was at fault for the poisoning.
The same boiler inspector also performed an investigation after the fact, and testified that management was uninterested in hearing his findings or recommendations for preventing further incidents.
The focus of that case was what compensation the Ritz owed to its engineer. Unfortunately, there was no accompanying case to determine what the Ritz owed to its guests. Guests at any hotel have a right to expect their safety to take priority over the interpersonal conflicts of their hosts. Anyone who suffered harm because a Ritz-Carlton manager ignored the results of a safety inspection would have had strong grounds for a lawsuit of their own.
The New Orleans Ritz-Carlton’s decision to fire an employee without an investigation, following an incident that harmed several guests, does seem to be unusual for the brand. More often, Ritz-Carlton hotels seem to err on the side of “protecting their own.”
This practice, of course, can be equally harmful to guests in need of transparency and justice.
Guests at Ritz-Carlton hotels have reported an alarming number of sexual assaults by employees, and an even more alarming lack of cooperation from Ritz-Carlton management and the Marriott company.
In June of 2023, a woman reported that an employee of the Ritz-Carlton in the Maldives came to her room and raped her, after she had requested help making a phone call. According to her, the staff responded to her report by telling her to leave, accusing her of trying to get a free stay, and attempting to confiscate her computer and other belongings that had the attacker’s semen on them.
Another woman is currently suing over an incident in which she drank from a semen-contaminated water bottle that was delivered to her room at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California in 2022. The hotel responded to her complaint by sending the bottle for lab testing, which confirmed the presence of semen. However, she says they have refused to share the full test results with her or her doctor, or to provide information on which employees would have been in a position to tamper with the bottle. Instead, they allegedly offered her points toward a future Marriott stay.
In 2018, yet another woman reported that a masseur sexually assaulted her during a massage at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago, Illinois. She sued as well, and expressed outrage over the general lack of response she received from simply reporting what had happened.
There was also an incident in 2011, in which a then 9-year-old girl reported waking up in her bed at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, Missouri to a stranger touching her inappropriately. That stranger was not a Ritz-Carlton employee, but an employee did give him the key to her room.
Both the suspect and the front desk clerk maintain that the clerk issued suspect the wrong room key by accident. That may be true. However, it’s not unheard of for hotels, including high-end hotels, to hand out the room keys of women and girls to men who request them, without the room occupant’s consent. When this happens, it may be a sign that the hotel staff are accustomed to cooperating with sex traffickers and other criminals.
Ritz-Carlton employees don’t need to take an active part in a crime for the hotel to bear some responsibility for it. A hotel’s duty to address known threats to guest safety includes the threat of violence. So, if a particular guest proves to be a danger to others, the hotel must intervene, either directly or by involving law enforcement. If violence becomes an ongoing problem in a specific hotel, that hotel must invest in proportionate security of its own.
Hotels also have a specific duty to avoid profiting off of sex trafficking. This means refusing to do business with anyone they have reason to suspect is coercing others into commercial sexual activities.
There’s no shortage of alleged violence by Ritz-Carlton guests, against Ritz-Carlton guests.
Three women are currently suing Lorin Gabriel “Bassnectar” Ashton for allegedly trapping them in abusive sexual relationships while they were underage, and coercing them into filming child pornography.
One of the women says her involvement with Ashton began in 2012, when he approached her about some lyrics she had written, invited her to his room at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, immediately initiated sex, and then offered her money. She was 16, at the time, and he was 34.
Meanwhile, somewhere between 15 and 30 anonymous alleged victims are pursuing legal action against Clifford Joseph “T.I” Harris and his wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle-Harris, for various sex crimes.
The first accusation surfaced in 2016, from a woman who reported attending a party the couple hosted in their Ritz-Carlton suite in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her account details Harris confiscating all of the guests’ phones, drugging several girls or young women, and having them moved back and forth from the bedroom. Most damningly for the Ritz-Carlton itself, she says that afterward, Harris told his entourage to call security and have them remove a girl who was too intoxicated to walk.
Ritz-Carlton hotels have also come up as a setting in various high-profile allegations of nonsexual domestic violence, notably between Vince Herbert and Tamar Braxton, and between Jay “Jeezy” Jenkins and Jeannie Mai. In the case of Herbert and Braxton, an anonymous employee told reporters that it was common for the couple to have “fistfights” at the hotel.
Interfering in the activities of guests isn’t profitable or popular, especially when many of those guests are influential celebrities. When those activities involve criminal violence, however, interference becomes an ethical and legal obligation.
After a Ritz-Carlton accident or altercation, you can maximize your odds of collecting fair compensation by taking these steps:
The Stoddard Firm is passionate about helping victims claim the compensation they deserve and holding negligent companies accountable. We’re experts on personal injury, wrongful death, negligent security, premises liability, and sex trafficking law. We have experience helping clients take on major hotel companies, and we understand the unique laws that apply only to the hospitality industry.
To get started discussing your options with a qualified Atlanta hotel lawyer, reach out at 678-RESULTS or through our online chat function for a free consultation.
Matt Stoddard is a professional, hardworking, ethical advocate. He routinely faces some of the nation’s largest companies and some of the world’s largest insurers – opponents who have virtually unlimited resources. In these circumstances, Mr. Stoddard is comfortable. Mr. Stoddard provides his strongest efforts to his clients, and he devotes the firm’s significant financial resources to presenting the strongest case possible on their behalf. Matt understands that his clients must put their trust in him. That trust creates an obligation for Matt to work tirelessly on their behalf, and Matt Stoddard does not take that obligation lightly. [ Attorney Bio ]
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