St. Regis is a luxury hospitality brand owned by the Marriott company. In addition to standard hotels and resorts, the St. Regis brand also offers residential units with luxury hotel-like service.
In spite of the brand’s high-end promises, guests and residents sometimes encounter serious and even life-threatening problems at St. Regis locations.
Below, we’ll go over some of the most common reasons you might need to sue a St. Regis hotel, resort, or residence. If at any point you would prefer to speak directly with a lawyer, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.
All hotels, regardless of price point, have a legal duty to anticipate likely threats to guest safety, and take all reasonable steps to limit those threats. This might mean anything from fixing a loose hand rail to fumigating for harmful pests.
A hospitality brand that consistently commands four- and five-star ratings from the Forbes Travel Guide should have no trouble meeting basic health and safety standards, but some guests and residents have reported disturbing failures on St. Regis’s part.
Right now, the condo association of the St. Regis Bal Harbour Residences in Miami, Florida is suing the owner over a laundry list of alleged problems, including mold, improperly stored chemicals, flooded exit routes, unstable structures, and inoperable emergency systems.
This isn’t the first complaint of this kind toward that particular location. Six years ago, another resident also sued, alleging that management ignored his repeated complaints about noxious and irritating fumes from toxic insulation materials.
Nor is the St. Regis Bal Harbour unique in receiving such complaints. Another St. Regis, located in Rye, New York, is currently suing its own architectural firm for shoddy work, prompted by multiple reports from residents.
Substandard construction and maintenance are so much more than an inconvenience and disappointment to high-paying guests and residents. These are the kinds of errors that can cause long-term illnesses and deadly accidents when left unchecked.
Falls are one of the most common types of serious accidents in any setting, which is why all hotels need to be on the lookout for trip-and-fall or slip-and-fall hazards, such as uneven floor tiles or unmarked spills.
Single-level trip-and-falls have been known to happen at St. Regis hotels. There was a case in 2015 when a guest allegedly tripped over a carpeted wheelchair ramp during a dimly lit wedding reception at the Washington DC location. The height of St. Regis hotels, however, also adds the risk of deadly multi-story falls.
Most high-rise hotels manage this danger by simply keeping the upper floors fully enclosed, without openable windows. St. Regis hotels, on the other hand, typically provide communal and private balconies as part of their luxury aesthetic.
There have been two lethal falls at St. Regis hotels in the past three years, one in Mumbai, India, and one in Miami, Florida. Police classified both as apparent suicides, but the ex-wife of the Miami victim disputes this assessment. She believes the victim stumbled while drunk.
A St. Regis in Toronto, Canada also had a near miss this year. Two workers were replacing tiles on the outside of the hotel’s 56th floor, when the cables on one side of their swing stage snapped, leaving the stage dangling vertically from the side of the building. Luckily, the workers had functioning fall protection and were able to wait for rescue from the fire department.
Companies that require employees to work at a height need to make sure that they have everything they need to do so safely. Likewise, companies that invite guests to enjoy the view from a height must make sure it’s reasonably safe for them to do so. For venues like St. Regis hotels, this might mean building railings higher, or keeping balconies separate from areas that serve alcohol.
Addressing threats to guest safety doesn’t just mean preventing accidents. It also means gauging the threat of crime on a property, and adjusting security accordingly.
Guests at luxury hotels don’t usually expect crime to be an issue, but it can and does happen in even the most opulent of settings.
The most famous crime to take place at a St. Regis hotel was the murder of Sheila von Wiese-Mack in 2014, at the Bali location. Her daughter’s boyfriend killed her by striking her over the head with a metal fruit bowl during a family vacation. The daughter and boyfriend initially claimed that it was self-defense, but the daughter later confessed to having planned the murder with her boyfriend in advance of the vacation. After killing Wiese-Mack, the couple tried unsuccessfully to smuggle her body out of the hotel in their luggage.
That case gained notoriety due to its easily sensationalized details, but more mundane-seeming incidents are just as worthy of hotel management’s attention. In fact, the more routine and predictable a crime is, the more responsibility a hotel has to step in and stop it.
For example, back in 2018, there were at least three separate reported cases of women targeting men in the bar of the St. Regis in Atlanta and stealing expensive watches, sometimes at gunpoint. This doesn’t seem to have been the work of an isolated group of perpetrators. Multiple unrelated suspects were eventually arrested for the thefts, indicating a broader trend.
Hotels can help break criminal trends on their properties, or better yet, stop them from getting started in the first place, by implementing a few tried-and-true security measures, such as:
Right now, the St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado should definitely be taking a long, hard look at how it can improve its physical security standardss.
In October of 2023, that particular St. Regis encountered an admittedly unusual safety threat. A bear entered the building and made its way to the kitchen, where it attacked a responding security guard.
Local wildlife officers investigating the incident noted that the kitchen was clean and not unduly attractive to animals, so on its own, this incident might be written off as an oddity of running a business in a scenic and largely wild locale. In May of this year, however, the location proved itself vulnerable to human aggression as well.
In that incident, a visibly intoxicated guest began verbally abusing one of the hotel’s bartenders. She asked him to leave, without success. A manager then tried to escort the guest outside personally, apparently without involving a security guard. The guest then pulled out a knife and threatened the manager with it. Police later arrested and charged a suspect with felony menacing, trespassing, and harassment.
Thankfully, no one was injured, but the incident does reveal potentially serious flaws in the hotel’s security policies. Ideally, de-escalation and defense against violence should be handled by trained professionals whenever possible. Businesses that serve alcohol can also reduce the odds of violent altercations by refusing to serve guests who are already intoxicated or aggressive.
Security issues in the hospitality industry don’t always take the form of armed holdups and murder plots. Some of the worst things that happen to people in hotels arise from much quieter abuses of power. Sex crimes and human trafficking can alter dozens, even hundreds of lives under a single hotel roof, and go unaddressed for years.
For example, multiple celebrity assistants, including those working for Kanye West and Vin Diesel, have reported being sexually assaulted by their employers on St. Regis premises.
Another woman claims that she was offered a payoff at the St. Regis hotel in New York, after being raped at Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in 2002.
In addition to their general duty to protect guests from crime, hotels have a specific duty to refuse to participate in sex trafficking. If the staff has reason to believe that a guest is being coerced into providing sexual services, they must take action, whether by reaching out to help the guest directly, or by notifying the appropriate authorities.
It is possible for sex trafficking and other crimes, both sexual and nonsexual, to take place at a hotel without the staff’s knowledge. However, many hotels choose to cater to criminals as a main source of profit. Cheap motels are best known for it, but high-end motels are often highly motivated to protect their highest-paying guests, regardless of how harmful or illegal their behavior may be.
Some of the accusations against St. Regis hotels also go beyond simply hosting crime, and have to do with the hotels’ direct actions.
In 2017, a couple from Florida reported finding peep holes in their St. Regis hotel room in Puerto Rico. They say that when they covered the holes, staff members abruptly came to the room, claiming that they needed to fix something. When the staff members left, the holes were uncovered again.
Staff members at St. Regis hotels are also not immune to being victimized themselves. A group of workers at the Aspen location are currently pursuing a class action lawsuit, claiming that they were promised training and paid internships as part of an industry cultural exchange. Instead, they say, they were forced to work long hours for low wages, pay high rent for dilapidated group housing, and provide training to higher paid employees.
The plaintiffs’ description of how they have been treated is fairly typical of nonsexual human trafficking.
If you have also been coerced into performing any kind of service, sexual or otherwise, at a St. Regis hotel, you may be able to sue for compensation.
Immediately after an accident or attack at a St. Regis property, you can maximize your chances of recovery by following these steps:
The Stoddard Firm has extensive experience helping victims of hotel negligence collect the compensation they’re owed. We’re experts in all relevant areas of law, including premises liability, negligent security, personal injury, wrongful death, sex trafficking law, franchise law, and innkeeper laws.
We not afraid to hold wealthy companies accountable, or to look beyond the most obvious defendant and consider the negligence of third parties, like contractors, suppliers, and construction companies. We’ll examine your case from all angles and find the strategy that gets you the best possible outcome.
To speak to an Atlanta hotel lawyer about your case, reach out any time 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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