SpringHill Suites is a Marriott hotel brand specializing in, as the name suggests, suites. It’s marketed as an economical option for travelers looking for more space than a standard hotel room.

Unfortunately, the families and business travelers SpringHill Suites primarily caters to have encountered more than their share of serious safety issues over the years.

Below, we’ll go over the basics of when, why, and how to sue a SpringHill Suites. If at any point you’d prefer to speak directly with a hotel lawyer in Georgia, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.

Hotel Owners Must Make an Effort to Prevent Harm to Guests

When a hotel guest suffers some form of harm, the question of whether a lawsuit is appropriate generally comes down to preventability. If the hotel’s management had a reasonable opportunity to predict and prevent what happened, but chose not to, then the company is liable for the consequences.

For example, if one guest slips on a puddle created by a leaking pipe, and another guest slips on a puddle created by stepping out of the shower without using the provided bathmat, the first guest would have a much stronger case than the second. A hotel can fix a pipe, but it can’t force guests to use safety tools in the privacy of their rooms.

There’s a reason why falls are such a classic example of a premises accident. They’re simple, serious, usually preventable, and extremely common. In fact, between 2014 and 2016, three unrelated guests sued SpringHill Suites over fall injuries allegedly sustained in their bathrooms.

Falls are just the beginning of premises liability, however, not the end. The same question of preventability can also be applied to just about any other harmful thing that could happen in a hotel, from fires to bedbug bites to poisoning.

Of course, it’s not always obvious whether an incident was preventable or not. What seems like an unstoppable freak occurrence to a guest might actually be part of an ongoing problem the hotel has known about for years. That’s part of why it’s so important to check in with a lawyer for an expert perspective.

SpringHill Suites Swimming Pools Have Proven Especially Deadly for Young Guests

In general, the swimming pool is the most dangerous part of any hotel that has one, at least in terms of serious accidents. The risks are especially high for small children.

Pool safety is an industry-wide problem, but some hospitality brands definitely have stronger track records than others.

SpringHill Suites is not one of those safer brands, statistically. Over the course of the past 11 years:

  • A 7-year-old boy fatally drowned in the pool of the SpringHill Suites in Coeur D’alene, Idaho.
  • A 5-year-old girl attending her cousin’s birthday party at the SpringHill Suites in Virginia Beach, Virginia was found not breathing in the pool. She did not survive, and according to police, there was no security footage of the incident.
  • A 4-year-old girl drowned in the pool of the SpringHill Suites in Dayton, Ohio, also while attending a birthday party. Investigators say at least two adults where in the pool area, but by the time the girl was pulled from the water, she had suffered fatal injuries.
  • A 21-year-old man died after trying to hold his breath underwater for a bet. Sudden drowning during extended breath holding is more common than most people realize, and pool owners do have the power to post warnings.
  • A 5-year-old boy survived a drowning accident at the pool of the SpringHill Suites in Palm Beach, Florida. There was a large group present at the pool, including the boy’s family, and investigators credit his survival largely to his 6-year-old sister and another 11-year-old girl rescuing him from the water. An adult was able to perform CPR, with instructions from a 911 operator, and restart the boy’s breathing by the time first responders arrived.

It’s common for families with small children to choose hotels with pools, expecting a safe, controlled environment for swimming practice and play. Sadly, that’s often not the case, either in general or at SpringHill Suites specifically.

Hotels know that pools are a selling point, and by choosing to provide them, they’re voluntarily taking on the responsibility of running them safely. So, if you’ve been injured or lost someone at a SpringHill Suites pool, there’s a good chance you have a viable personal injury or wrongful death case.

Protecting Hotel Guests Means Preventing Crime as Well as Accidents

Just one child drowning in a swimming pool, or even one guest slipping and breaking a bone, shouldn’t be acceptable by any hotel’s safety standards. That said, the single greatest threat to hotel guests isn’t swimming pools, or any other source of accidents. It’s crime.

Gun violence incidents, in particular, can pile up over the course of years the way drownings pile up over decades.

For example, in 2024 alone:

  • A woman was shot to death in the restaurant of a SpringHill Suites in Cheraw, South Carolina. She was allegedly trying to leave during an argument with her killer.
  • A teenage boy was shot to death at the SpringHill Suites in Columbus, Georgia. Two other teenage boys were arrested for the crime.
  • A man pointed a gun at police, who were approaching him about suspected credit card fraud at the SpringHill Suites in Gahanna, Ohio. Officers reportedly tried to fire a beanbag round at him but missed, and then resorted to lethal force.
  • Two men stepped out of a black car and fired into a crowd standing in front of the SpringHill Suites in Chicago, Illinois. One bullet grazed the shoulder of a driver who had been dropping off passengers in front of the hotel.

Armed assaults might seem like an incredibly daunting threat for hotel managers and owners to protect against. The issue of gun violence is, of course, much bigger than the hospitality industry.

There are some concrete measures, however, that hotels can take to reduce the odds of violence on the premises. Maintaining good lighting and surveillance camera coverage in common areas, restricting physical access to guest-only areas, requiring photo ID upon check-in, and employing security guards can all help deter criminal activity, not only at the hotel but in the surrounding area.

Most importantly, hotel owners have enormous power over the hotel’s workplace culture. They can choose whether the staff feel a duty to support victims and report violent crimes, or whether they feel obligated to enable and cover up violence, in order to protect the hotel’s reputation, or allow it to profit off of criminal enterprises, such as sex trafficking.

Guests have raised alarming criticisms of the company culture in at least one SpringHill Suites location.

In 2021, an intoxicated man allegedly harassed and threatened a transgender woman at the SpringHill Suites in Montgomery, Alabama. According to the victim and the colleagues she was traveling with, the staff refused to help her or take any action against the alleged aggressor, and responded to her complaint be threatening to have her arrested.

If you’ve been attacked or lost a loved one to violence at a SpringHill Suites, don’t discount the role of the hotel itself in what happened. A lawyer can help you look beyond the individual actions of the attacker to search for deeper patterns.

Safety Threats Can Come Directly from Hotel Managers and Employees

Most of the time, hotel employees are doing the best they can with the resources, training, and orders they’ve been given. Even when the behavior of a hotel’s staff is clearly negligent, the most common issue is inaction. A hazard of some sort threatens the safety of guests, and the staff fails to intervene appropriately.

SpringHill Suites has had an alarming number of incidents, however, in which employees didn’t just ignore or enable threats — they were the threat.

In July of 2024, a valet working at a SpringHill Suites in Milwaukee, Wisconsin allegedly took a guest’s car without permission and killed a pedestrian in the course of a reckless, intoxicated joyride.

A year earlier, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, another SpringHill Suites employee was arrested for allegedly approaching two minors in the pool area, exposing himself to them, and attempting to sexually assault them.

Two more years before that, police responded to the SpringHill Suites in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, to find one employee unresponsive and another holding a pair of scissors, which he refused to drop when officers directed him to. Police arrested the employee with the scissors by force and reviewed the hotel’s security footage, which appeared to show him beating the other employee unconscious.

SpringHill Suites hotels, like all businesses, are legally liable for the actions of their employees during the course of work. Ideally, management should be able to spot and address signs of dangerous behavior before anyone gets hurt, but even if there are no warning signs, employer liability still stands.

This is because employers are the ones who profit when their employees’ actions during work hours are productive. So, it makes sense for employers to bear financial responsibility when their employees’ actions are destructive instead.

If you’ve been directly injured by an on-duty SpringHill Suites employee, even if you weren’t a guest at the time, that’s likely grounds to sue SpringHill Suites.

The Franchise System Makes It Difficult to Sue Hospitality Giants

Because SpringHill Suites is a Marriott brand, it can be tempting, even intuitive, for victims of SpringHill Suites incidents to sue the Marriott company directly.

Like most hospitality brands, however, SpringHill Suites is franchised. This means that, while Marriott owns the brand name, smaller companies own the individual properties. In most cases, when someone is injured at a hotel, liability falls on the owner of that individual hotel, rather than the owner of the brand. Courts often dismiss premises liability suits against Marriott, or allow them to proceed only once they’ve dropped Marriott as a defendant.

Simply suing an individual SpringHill Suites is not necessarily a bad thing. Hotel franchisees are sizeable businesses in their own right, usually more than capable of paying victims a decent settlement.

There are situations, however, where it’s possible to hold companies like Marriott accountable for what happens in the hotels they profit from. Specifically, if Marriott verifiably knew about a problem in advance, or made the problem worse with its rules for franchisees, the victim might be able to collect from Marriott instead of, or in addition to, the individual hotel.

If you’re uncertain who the appropriate defendant would be for your case, a lawyer can go over the facts and help identify your best option.

What to Do If You’ve Been Harmed at a SpringHill Suites

If you’ve fallen victim to a crime or accident at a SpringHill Suites, the first thing to do is take care of your physical health and safety. Remove yourself from any ongoing danger, and schedule a medical exam to document and begin treatment for your injuries.

The second thing to do is gather together all evidence you have access to, and speak to a lawyer. If the SpringHill Suites is indeed liable for your injuries, it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll be able to collect what you’re owed without representation.

The Stoddard Firm is passionate about getting crime and accident survivors the answers and resources they need to put their lives back together. We’re experts in premises liability, personal injury, wrongful death, negligent security, sex trafficking law, franchise law, innkeeper laws, and all other areas of law necessary for virtually any hotel liability case. We’ll investigate what happened to you from every angle, and strategize with you to make sure we’re working toward the best outcome.

To get started discussing your case in a free consultation, give us a call at 678-RESULTS, or reach out through our online chat function.

Attorney Matt Stoddard

Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer Matt StoddardMatt 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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