The Renaissance Fort Lauderdale Marina Hotel is suing Southwest Airlines and a flight attendant for flooding they say was caused by the crewmember in her room on a layover last year. While the suit was first filed in January, it was moved to federal court this month.
The hotel says the flight attendant interfered with a fire sprinkler in her room despite a posted warning telling guests not to tamper with the system. The sprinkler discharged, flooding multiple guest rooms as well as the front desk and other common areas. They were forced to cancel reservations, and bring in outside cleanup and restoration crews. They claim losses of $215,576.
Flight attendants are going to be pretty judgment proof, which is why here’s insurance. Most hotel guests won’t be able to pay $200,000 for damages.
What’s interesting is suing Southwest Airlines. Generally I wouldn’t expect an employer to be vicariously liable when their employee causes damage to a hotel room on their stay. But Southwest actually books the room. Layover lodging is part of the job itself.
Of course, the flight attendant wouldn’t have been performing their job by tampering with a sprinkler. That’s not serving their employer, or something done in the ordinary course of business travel.
And Southwest wasn’t put on notice about this particular employee being unfit or having a propensity to do this, so negligent supervision which is claimed in the suit will be hard to show.
The suit also simultaneously argues Southwest is liable because her stay was within the scope of her employment, while they’re claiming she was acting outside of her employment and Southwest was negligent in allowing this.
Guests make blunders with sprinklers all the time. That’s why many have stickers by the sprinklres not to do this.
- A high school senior staying at the Holiday Inn Dumfries the night before a JROTC drill competition “wanted to make sure his uniform looked perfect.”
They hung the uniform from the sprinkler head in their room and properly affixed all their ribbons and medals. He was surprised that when he took his jacket down “the sprinkler activated — resulting in more than $690,000 in damage.”
- A wedding planner made this same mistake with a dress.
- And when a guest did this at the Sheraton Sydney, an entire floor was flooded. He also attacked hotel staff and threw things out the window.
The flight attendant here seems to be in a tough spot. There’s not any photo, video, or witness evidence showing her tampering – just a sprinkler expert. That’s probably the best thing about their position. But the case against her is probably better than against Southwest. Southwest has the deeper pockets.
Speaking of deep pockets, wouldn’t the hotel have insurance coverage for this kind of accidental damage? Or not, better to just sue everyone; at least the lawyers get paid…
Well, I cannot find a complaint on the hyperlinked docket sheet. But I have to wonder whether any contract by which the hotel provides lodging to Southwest for its employees provides that Southwest is responsible for damage employees inflict on the property. If so, the liability would arise out of contract, not tort.
@1990, perhaps there is insurance. If there is, the policy would likely provide the carrier subrogation rights by which the carrier can step into the insured’s shoes and pursue the current claim against Southwest.
A good friend used to be the Director of Sales at a nearby hotel and they kicked out Southwest a few years ago because of increased damage to the hotel. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what, but apparently it came down from the Hotel Director to not extend their contract. Typically hotels LOVE airline crews because they’re mostly low maintenance, rarely use the free breakfast, don’t take up a parking spot, and mostly just go to the room, sleep, and get up on in the morning and go.
Waste of time. Southwest will be dismissed as a party
In many cases flight attendants are the reason crews get kicked out of hotels. Theft of room items and skip on paying their room charges.
Smarter hotels install fire-suppression system heads in the ceiling, with covers.
FA’s are primarily there for your safety.
Are we going to have a problem here?
Presumably the FA wanted to smoke or vape in the room and was trying to decommission the smoker detector. Otherwise, why would one play around with a smoke detector?
@Coffee Please — Prejudicial nonsense.
@George Nathan Romey — Why do you sometimes go with First Last, other times Middle Initial, but here full name? Also, if anyone should know about not messing with smoke detectors… it’s flight crews… 14 CFR § 121.317(i).
If this is such a large problem with stupid guests, why aren’t the hotels installing heavy duty hooks below/around the sprinklers along with sign?
@1990 – I believe Mr. Romey was referring to smoking/vape detectors (such as from “FreshAir” and others) rather than fire-safety smoke detectors.
@Coffee Please, “skip on paying their room charges”. Hotels usually have contracts with airlines which provide housing for flight crews. The bill goes to the airline, not to the airline’s employee. Perhaps you need a bit more caffeine to clearly understand the situation.
Architect and original MEP (engineering) contractors were likely TOLD to cost-cut – and use non-flush sprinkler heads. Blame the project control/cost group that drove the build-out price down.
hotels don’t get stuck with folio charges on airline staff; they have no charging privileges unless they go down to the front desk and register a card. When they are given discounts (eg: 20-50% off at bar/restaurant/etc) they have to either pay at time of service or have a card on file with the front desk, and most never EVER like to wait in line.
“Typically hotels LOVE airline crews because they’re mostly low maintenance”
Spoken by someone that has never worked at a hotel with airline crews. IME, hotels rarely take crews because they want to. It’s always because you need to put heads in beds so you hold your nose and look the other way for as long as you can.
What are the perks?
Let’s see…you’ll need to accept a “negotiated” rate with the 3rd party company which handles the travel (the hotel and the airline never have direct contact with each other) that will be more than likely 30-40 percent lower than your current ADR.
That same 3rd party company will suck at communicating how many crew are coming on a particular day and any delays either to/from the airport which is fun because the contract usually has a provision in there saying something to the effect of if the hotel is “responsible” for any crew member being more than 15 minutes past their call time or waiting more than 15 minutes to get picked up for any reason, the hotel eats that room or there is a monetary penalty.
When you deal with ATI (Amazon) or Fedex crews who have don’t have the same space restrictions as passenger crews, you get into things like, “I need you to help me load my mountain bike/foldable kayak/golf clubs in the shuttle and I need to store it somewhere at the hotel for next month while I’m on this route?” If you say no or have any hesitation, crew member X calls the union rep in charge of lodging who files a complaint with the 3rd party company who then wants to speak with the hotel’s general manager about staff not being “accommodating” to the crews.
And of course, like other guests, there is the constant pushing of boundaries of how far you’ll take them in the shuttle. You can say five-mile radius all you want, but because they’re a crew member, they think they’re exempt from that or that they’re exempt from restrictions like the shuttle only going to the airport between certain late-night hours.
Admittedly, are all of them that way? No, but a healthy percentage are and the more senior the crew member, the more they expect you to bend over backwards for them.
“Hotels usually have contracts with airlines which provide housing for flight crews.”
Nope.
Hotels have a contract with a company like TA Connections. All bills get submitted to TA Connections or to a company like Corpay (formerly CLC) and all payments to the hotel are made as an ACH transfer from TA or Corpay. There is no contact between the hotel and the airline.
“In many cases flight attendants are the reason crews get kicked out of hotels. Theft of room items and skip on paying their room charges.”
??
What room charges? It’s not like crews in North America get put up in five-star properties. They’re staying at Holiday Inn Express/Homewood Suites/Staybridge Suites type properties. What the hell can you charge at those properties?
There are also provisions in the contract between the hotel and the 3rd party company that neither the 3rd party company nor the airline are responsible for incidental charges. You either need to get a method of payment at the time of purchase, or the hotel one way or another will eat whatever the item is.
Some comment mentioned “fooling around with smoke detectors”. Eh…a smoke detector isn’t going to flood a room. The flight attendant could have tried to put a coat hanger on it to dry some clothes, etc. In other words…this flight attendant isn’t ignorant (can be fixed) but stupid (which is forever). While Southwest booked the room, how can they be responsible for an individual’s actions unless they, in some bizarre way, told the flight attendant to do whatever caused the system to activate? This suit is all about “deep pockets”. Sue the deepest pockets and hope for the best. Getting $200K from a flight attendant is not going to happen BUT…garnish the wages, current and future, for a little bit each check to remind this attendant and possibly others, STUPID can get you in trouble financially, too! Loser pays laws would help reduce the numbers of frivolous law suits and possibly reduce the number of “ambulance chaser” lawyers.
@Denver Refugee — *puff puff* What now?
For an airline like SW to be struggling last year and putting the FAs in a Renaissance doesn’t scream bleeding money or best financial decisions… just saying, even if in their contract, make it make sense.