Lawyer for Suing W Hotels

W Hotels is an upscale hospitality brand owned by the Marriott company, specializing in luxury rooms, suites, and residential condos.

The opulent stylings of W Hotels might lead guests to assume that these hotels have everything under control, from thoughtful turndown service to routine maintenance. However, many W Hotels have shown signs of significant financial struggles in recent years, even before the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2009, at least four W Hotels have been shuttered, declared bankruptcy, or been re-sold at a loss, many of them only a year or so after opening.

When businesses underperform, they tend to look for new ways to cut corners, and safety measures are a frequent casualty.

Below, we’ll go over common reasons you might find yourself needing to sue a W Hotel. If at any point you would prefer to speak directly with a lawyer, feel free to reach out by phone or chat.

Glass, Furniture, and Even People Have Accidentally Fallen from W Hotels

W Hotels, like all physical businesses, have a duty to anticipate and fix likely safety hazards on their properties. When a hotel neglects this duty, the consequences can be devastating for guests and even neighbors.

For example, in November of 2015, a sofa fell from a scaffold outside a W penthouse in London, England. It struck a pedestrian, inflicting a skull fracture and facial injuries. Doctors had to place the victim in a medically induced coma due to the intensity of the pain.

Four years earlier, in 2011, at least eight separate glass panels detached from the balconies of a W Hotel in Austin, Texas, over the course of three weeks. The first two panels fell into the pool area, injuring four people. After multiple other incidents, the hotel eventually closed to remove all of the panels and investigate problems with their installation.

That same year, a window broke on the 10th floor of the W Hotel here in Atlanta, and two women fell out. One died in the fall. The other survived with severe injuries, after hitting other parts of the structure on her way to the ground level.

Police say the women were roughhousing near the window, but the fiancé of the deceased victim tells a different story. He says he saw the window shatter violently when the two victims, each weighing approximately 120 pounds, leaned on it while hugging. Journalists investigating the incident could not find any record of the windows having been brought into compliance with modern building codes during the hotel’s last renovation.

That wasn’t the last time someone would fall to their death from a W Hotel, or even the last time in 2011.

Just one month after those two women tumbled out of the side of the Atlanta location, another woman fell from the rooftop bar of the W Hotel in Washington DC. Witness accounts again vary somewhat on the details. Rather than another accident, her death may have been a suicide — another pervasive issue at W Hotels.

W Hotels Have Been Accused of Obstructing Efforts to Rescue Guests in Crisis

In general, hotels are not legally responsible for preventing suicides. As hosts, they must take all reasonable steps to provide an environment that is safe to navigate with an ordinary level of care. But, unlike hospitals or schools, hotels do not accept a caregiver role for their guests.

That said, if a hotel actively prevents a guest from receiving necessary care, the hotel may be considered liable for the outcome.

Back in 2014, Norman Buckley, director of Pretty Little Liars, sued a W Hotel in Hollywood, California for allegedly preventing him from stopping the suicide of his husband, Davyd Whaley. Buckley had traced his missing husband to the W Hotel based on a credit card charge. When he spoke to the staff, they refused to give him his Whaley’s room number or acknowledge that he was a guest at all. After more than a day of telling the staff and the police department that Whaley was a suicide risk and needed medication, Buckley called 911. By the time paramedics entered the Whaley’s room, he was already dead.

Whaley had allegedly asked to register “incognito” and displayed nervous and “erratic” behavior during his interactions with staff.

It should be noted that hotels can find themselves walking a fine line in situations like these, between protecting guests’ privacy and security, and cooperating with necessary mental health support. A hotel that gives out a nervous guest’s room number to someone claiming to be a concerned spouse would also be liable for the outcome if the person requesting the number turned out to be a stalker or abuser who meant the guest harm.

The laws surrounding hotel liability recognize how challenging these judgment calls can be, which is part of why Buckley’s suit was ultimately unsuccessful.

Still, responsible and compassionate hotel owners need to be aware that hotels are a common setting for suicide, as well as drug overdoses and other self-destructive behaviors. The actions of a hotel’s staff can determine whether or not a person in crisis receives timely intervention from rescue crews and loved ones, which in turn can determine whether that person lives or dies.

For example, in 2020, at the W Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, an 18-hour standoff with a guest facing suicide ended peacefully and without injury. Crisis negotiators and family members successfully coaxed the man away from the window of his 14th-story room and into hospital care. This only happened after the guest broke the window while armed with a machete and declared his intention to jump, however.

If the hotel had only received pleas for help from family members, without the guest’s condition becoming so publicly visible, it’s unclear what might have happened.

Guests and Residents at W Hotels Are Entitled to Adequate Security

As noted, hotels have a duty to protect their guests from violence. This duty works just like protecting guests from accidents: if the hotel has reason to anticipate a problem, it must address it.

This means that a hotel might not be liable for one sudden, random act of violence, if there was no obvious way for the staff to prevent it safely. But once violence becomes a pattern at a certain hotel, or in the surrounding area, the hotel can be held liable for failing to invest in proportionate security.

There are a few W Hotels in the U.S that have had repeated issues with crime, notably the one in Chicago, Illinois near Navy Pier, and the one right here in Atlanta.

In 2016, a drive-by shooting at the Chicago location left three people critically injured. All of the victims turned out to have gang affiliations, a fairly clear sign that this was not a random, isolated incident.

The year 2020 brought two more altercations on the property, first an armed robbery, then a shooting that sent a man to the hospital.

Given that context, a maid at the hotel was very understandably alarmed when, in 2023, she discovered a cache of weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle with a laser scope, in a guest room overlooking the pier. The guest denied any violent intent but pled guilty to reckless conduct.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the residential area of the W Hotel suffered two home burglaries within four months of each other, between 2017 and 2018. In both cases, security footage showed a group of four men looting one of the residences.

Then, in August of 2024, also in the Atlanta W’s residential area, a man was shot and killed on the 26th floor. The victim was reportedly leaving his unit, when another man arriving on the floor attacked him.

Hotels do have the power to prevent incidents like these, by checking guest IDs, limiting public access to guest and resident spaces, maintaining good security camera coverage, and employing well-trained security guards. Without the right precautions, they risk exposing guests to robbery, shootings, and other criminal threats.

Several W Hotels Have Been Implicated in Alleged Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking is a serious issue throughout the hospitality industry. It happens at every price point, but tends to take slightly different forms. At budget motels, traffickers might hold victims for long periods and sell them to dozens of anonymous visitors. At luxury hotels, it’s more common for rich and powerful sexual predators to arrange for victims to be brought to them, often under the guise of professional networking or parties.

For example, Peter Nygard, owner of the now-defunct Canadian fashion company of the same name, is currently facing a class action lawsuit for sex trafficking. The 57 women involved in the suit say that he used his company to systematically identify and groom potential victims, for the purpose of coercing sexual favors from them. The suit also names the W Hotel in Times Square as a defendant, based on multiple accounts of Nygard bringing victims there to assault them.

Nygard is currently serving an 11-year sentence for the sexual assault of four other women in Canada.

The accusations against Nygard are reminiscent of a group of lawsuits from 2016, against Chris Bathum, founder of the Community Recovery chain of drug rehab centers. Rather than a class action, there were 50 separate suits against Bathum, alleging a range of misconduct against patients, including sexually abusing the women in his care and encouraging their continued dependance on illegal drugs.

Like Nygard, Bathum was convicted of multiple sexual assaults in criminal court, and like Nygard, the accusations against him named a W Hotel as a venue for the assaults.

Back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the W Hotel in Washington DC also featured prominently in the rape and sex trafficking allegations against former French presidential hopeful, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He allegedly attended multiple “sex parties” at the hotel, and once texted a party’s organizer to confirm that prostitutes would be provided. Although Strauss-Kahn himself was eventually acquitted, and all civil suits against him were either dropped or settled out of court, no one denies that the parties themselves took place at the hotel, or that they involved prostitution.

In addition to the general duty to protect guests from foreseeable harm, hotels have a specific duty to refrain from enabling or profiting from sex trafficking. If the staff of a hotel has reason to believe that someone is being coerced into commercial sex acts, and management fails to take action, the hotel itself can be sued for sex trafficking.

What to Do If You’ve Been Injured or Lost a Loved One at a W Hotel or Residence

Starting immediately after a W Hotel accident or criminal incident, you can help protect your interests by following these steps as closely as possible:

1. Get to safety. Don’t put yourself or your loved ones at additional risk for any reason.
2. Get medical care. Prompt treatment means an easier recovery and more accurate medical records.
3. Preserve the evidence. Anything you believe might be relevant, from a reservation email to a photo of the scene, keep it safe.
4. Find a lawyer. The sooner you get professional representation, the better protected you will be from bad-faith offers, evidence destruction, and other underhanded tactics.

The Stoddard Firm has expertise in every area of law you will need to win a case against a W Hotel, including personal injury, wrongful death, premises liability, negligent security, sex trafficking, innkeeper law, HOA law, and landlord-tenant law.

We’re deeply passionate about uncovering the truth, holding negligent parties accountable, and above all, getting our clients the compensation they deserve.

To get started discussing your potential case against a W Hotel with an Atlanta hotel lawyer, reach out though our online chat function or at 678-RESULTS for a free consultation.