Legal Cases/Articles - Hotels and Their Duty of Care
Hotels and Their Duty of Care
By Jaime E. Suarez
What legal duty does a hotel operator have towards its guests? What if the hotel creates its own foreseeable zone of risk? The following is an example of what can happen and its legal ramifications.
Examining a Hotel Operator’s Duty of Care1
A husband and wife checked into a Miami Beach Hotel.2 The wife was forty-six years old, had been married to her husband for twenty-seven years, and had been a diabetic for thirty-two years. As a diabetic, the wife was insulin dependent – she gave herself two injections per day as well as checked her blood sugar level daily.
At 6:00 P.M., following the husband’s request for medical assistance to the front desk, paramedics came to the room accompanied by hotel security personnel.3 The German front desk clerk also came up to the room to act as interpreter because the husband and wife did not speak English. The wife’s vital signs did not indicate a need for emergency transport and she was advised that any further tests needed to be conducted at the hospital. The husband and wife did not wish to go to the hospital and were reassured by the desk clerk that the hotel had a doctor available.4
As the evening progressed, the wife’s condition worsened. The husband went down to the front desk several times to express his concern about his wife's condition and finally requested that the doctor be called. The hotel contacted an on-call medical services company, who sent R. Gonzalez to treat Mrs. Riedel.5 Neither security personnel nor the German-speaking front desk clerk accompanied R. Gonzalez to the room.6
R. Gonzalez was a licensed doctor in Peru, but only had a temporary physician's assistant license in Florida.7 When he arrived at the husband and wife’s room, he identified himself as a doctor. Although communication was difficult, R. Gonzalez learned that the wife was an insulin dependent diabetic; however he did not check her blood sugar level nor inquire about her last insulin injection. R. Gonzalez prescribed Emetrol and Pedialyte for the wife’s diarrhea and apparent dehydration, both of which are contraindicated for diabetics.
After the medicine was prescribed, the husband immediately took a taxi to the nearest pharmacy, and with Emetrol and Pedialyte. The husband administered one dose at 12:30 AM and another dose approximately one hour later.
When the husband awoke in the morning, his wife was dead. An autopsy revealed that she had died from ketoacidosis, an absolute deficiency of insulin which causes the body to turn fats into acids.8
The husband brought suit against the hotel for negligent selection and retention of he on-call medical services company. The jury found that the hotel was not negligent and that R. Gonzalez was not the hotel’s agent.9 The husband then appealed the jury’s decision.
The Appeal
Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal began its analysis stating that “[t]he existence of a legal duty is not a question for the jury, but rather a question of law for the court.”10 Furthermore, an innkeeper has a special relationship with his guests which gives rise to a duty to protect them against unreasonable risk of physical harm.11 Therefore, “[t]he standard of care owed to an occupant of a hotel room (an invitee) is reasonable care.”12 The Court also stated that “[a] hotel also has a duty to implement reasonable inspection procedures in order to protect its guests.” 13
In its analysis, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal stated that although the hotel initially had no obligation to provide their guests with medical assistance, once the hotel undertook the task of providing the medical assistance, the hotel had a duty to exercise reasonable care.14 “When anyone undertakes to do a particular act for another, the act undertaken must be done with reasonable care so as not to injure the other person by reason of the act performed.” 15
A Foreseeable Zone of Risk
The Third District Court of Appeal further explained that “[w]here a defendant's conduct creates a foreseeable zone of risk, the law generally will recognize a duty placed upon defendant either to lessen the risk or see that sufficient precautions are taken to protect others from the harm that the risk poses.”16 Furthermore the Court emphasized that the courts “… cannot find a lack of duty if a foreseeable zone of risk more likely than not was created by the defendant.”17
Here the hotel represented to its guests that it provided non-emergency medical services and if a guest wanted a doctor to come to the room, he was instructed to ask the front desk, concierge, or operator, who would in turn contact the on-call medical services company. The court also pointed out that “[i]n fact, the Director of Security had informed his staff that the on-call medical services company was the only medical provider authorized to treat the hotel’s guests in their hotel rooms.”18 Although the hotel told the husband and wife that it would provide a doctor, the hotel instead provided a “temporarily licensed unsupervised physician's assistant, thereby creating a foreseeable zone of risk.”19
The Court found that the hotel breached its duty to the husband and wife when the hotel failed to protect them from unreasonable risk of harm when providing medical assistance. Specifically, the hotel’s failure to make any inquiry about the on-call medical services company created a foreseeable risk that the wife would receive improper medical care.
Several security experts, including the hotel’s corporate security director, testified that it is “advisable that a hotel not offer medical services, but that if it chooses to do so, it should conduct a background check on the service it plans to use.”20 A background check of the on-call medical services company would have revealed that it was operated by a young and inexperienced husband-and-wife team with no medical training or medical administration training. Furthermore, the on-call medical services company obtained its business by soliciting front desk clerks, hotel operators and concierge personnel, who would then receive a commission of $10 to $30 per referral.21 The company also had no occupational license, had no licensed doctor with staff privileges at any local hospital, and it had no liability insurance.22
Finally, the court stated that an investigation would have also revealed that the owners of the on-call medical services company had been involved in the death of another tourist at a hotel in Orlando the previous year.23
At trial, the hotel placed a heavy emphasis on the wife’s failure to take her insulin or monitor her blood sugar as the major cause of her death. The Court stated that her failure to take insulin or check her blood sugar level cannot be a legal cause of her death because any negligence on her part which occurred prior to being examined by R. Gonzalez simply provided the occasion for the actions of the hotel and R. Gonzalez.24 The Court also dismissed any negligence on the husband’s part stating that the husband “adequately fulfilled any spousal duty of care owed to his wife by caring for her while she was ill, twice summoning medical help, and immediately following “the doctor's” orders.”25
In conclusion, although the hotel initially had no obligation to provide the husband and wife with medical assistance, once it undertook this task, it had a duty to exercise reasonable care. In this case, Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal found that the hotel failed to exercise reasonable care when it hired the on-call medical services company without conducting a background check, thereby creating a foreseeable risk that the wife would receive improper medical care.
1 The outline of facts is taken from Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d 530 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002).
2 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 531.
3 Id.
4 Id.
5 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 531-532.
6 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 532.
7 Id.
8 Id.
9 Id.
10 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (quoting Garcia v. Lifemark Hospitals of Florida, 754 So.2d 48, 49 (Fla. 3d DCA 1999)). See also Florida Power & Light Co. v. Periera, 705 So.2d 1359 (Fla.1998).
11 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (citing Adika v. Beekman Towers, 633 So.2d 1170, 1170-71 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994)).
12 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (quoting Phillips Petroleum Co. of Bartlesville, Okl. v. Dorn, 292 So.2d 429, 431 (Fla. 4th DCA 1974)).
13 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (citing Fontana v. Wilson World Maingate Condo., 717 So.2d 199 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998)).
14 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (citing Buscemi v. Intachai, 730 So.2d 329, 330 (Fla. 2d DCA 1999)).
15 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., supra (citing Buscemi v. Intachai, 730 So.2d 329, 330 (Fla. 2d DCA 1999)).
16 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 532 (quoting National Title Ins. Co. v. Lakeshore 1 Condo. Assoc., Inc., 691 So.2d 1104, 1106 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997) (quoting McCain v. Florida Power Corp., 593 So.2d 500, 503 (Fla.1992))).
17 Id., (quoting McCain, 593 So.2d at 503).
18 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 533.
19 Id.
20 Id.
21 Id.
22 Id.
23 Id.
24 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 533-534 (citing Vendola v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co., 474 So.2d 275 (Fla. 4th DCA 1985) (plaintiff's suicide attempt was merely pre-existing condition and therefore not a legal cause of damage in negligence action against phone company for failure to respond to request for ambulance); Metropolitan Dade County v. Colina, 456 So.2d 1233 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984) (county's negligence in failing to repair stoplight merely provided occasion for negligence of drivers who caused accident); Whitehead v. Linkous, 404 So.2d 377 (Fla. 1st DCA 1981) (conduct of patient which contributes to medical condition merely furnishes the occasion for medical treatment and subsequent negligence of doctor and hospital)).
25 See Riedel v. Sheraton Bal Harbour Association, et al., 806 So.2d at 534.
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