What hotels do you go to, and why? For the past 15 years at least all hotels I stay at write my room number on the envelope with my key card and never, ever say it. And I get directions to the elevator. If it is an outside hotel, they may draw directions on the map.
I do. Otherwise it is a cost of doing business. Some time back some hotel chain got sued because they left the doors to their interior hallways open to the public, and a rapist got in and attacked guests. If the courts only sent the rapist to jail without penalizing the hotel in a big way nothing would change. Now you usually need a key to get in from outside. That is expensive - would the hotels do it without the threat of big money settlements hanging over them? Doubtful.
I assume the $55 million figure was justified during the trial. But it has to be non-trivial.
As I said above, and will repeat: Marriott, the corporation, has nothing to do with the lawsuit. They are not a party. The Nashville Marriott, individually, was sued.
You appear to be assuming that the only choices are “doing nothing” and “massive punitive damages awards”.
In many cases, the field between those two options is filled by regulatory agencies of various sorts - from voluntary, through self-regulatory bodies, to agencies of the government like the securities and exchange commission.
I’m totally unclear as to why trusting to random massive punitive damages in lawsuits (which I have been assured in this very thread are infrequent) is the best means of ensuring public safety, let alone evaluating the relative value of various safety options!
To put it another way - every business on this planet has a limit to what it can spend on safety and security. If it spends above that limit, it is no longer profitable and goes out of business. Therefore, choices have to be made.
Should those choices be made by (1) a regulatory code, worked out in painstaking detail by experts in the field, or (2) by what amounts to random chance - those areas that (purely by chance) someone happens to get injured by a lack of, sue on, and win a massive punitives award (each, in its own way, an unlikely event)?
I quite fail to see why the latter is, not only a good system, but the best possible system.
…can we lay off the insults please?
I’d like to think that I’m a “thinking person” and I don’t see what is absurd about the amount of damages here at all. If you think it is absurd then you make that case. But don’t insult me because I hold a different opinion to you.
Revealing hotel room numbers of guests is not “garden-variety negligence.” As has been pointed out several times by hotel industry insiders: security of room numbers is essential. There are two things drilled into every employee: make sure doors are locked and don’t give out room numbers to anyone.
This hotel exposed every hotel guest name and room number. It is an un-imaginable security breach that, again as pointed out by others, should have been readily picked up in a security audit. That it wasn’t is gross negligence.
No it isn’t.
Because she took the court case. Because she hired the lawyers. Because she was brave enough to stand in the courtroom, tell her story, reopening old wounds, knowing full well that this would once again make her a target for scorn and ridicule. People are welcome to take a class action suit if they feel they could win a case.
Your characterization of Erin Andrews as a “lucky plaintiff who hit the jury jackpot” is pretty damn insulting, in a thread that has already been pretty nasty to her.
It’s objectively absurd, because it doesn’t bear comparison with awards provided to people who have been deliberately murdered by the authorities.
By definition, the justice of awards is comparative - or ought to be. If one court awards $10,000 for negligently causing a certain type of injury, then another court awarding $10,000,000 for a directly comparable injury indicates injustice - either the former unjustly low, or the latter is unjustly high.
BTW, casting aspersions on a positions or ideas isn’t “insulting”. I had no intention of insulting you.
The distinction is between “negligence” and “malice”. As far as I know, there has been no malice alleged. Nothing you have said indicates what they did was anything other than negligent.
I stand corrected by your masterful refutation.
So, if she had been an average working stiff who could never in a million years afford lawyers to take a major case against a business, the problem would go uncorrected forever? And this is evidence that this system is good?
May I suggest that a system that does not require a wealthy person willing to take on the slings and arrows of “scorn and ridicule” to fight for justice, would probably be a better, more rational choice for what amounts to industry regulation?
I would imagine that most readers understood that the target of my attack was not her, but rather, the legal system.
But not in this case, right? There is no hotel-privacy-and-security agency on the job?
It appears to be the only system, presently.
I don’t think anybody is questioning that. Everybody appears to be ok with the creep’s jail time (although some think it should be more). It’s just the idea that the hotel is culpable to the tune of ~$25m that seems far fetched. The creep could have just followed her to find out what room she was in.
By definition, such a system wouldn’t work fairly.
Bill Gates could freely commit civil offenses every day of his life without a care in the world if the penalty only considered effect, instead of also taking into account the penalty’s impact on the perpetrator.
This is the exact problem under debate. It’s the existing system, and the thesis is that it is bad at promoting public safety efficiently - it purports to do so by providing what amounts to “windfalls” to select plaintiffs.
The debate isn’t likely to be resolved soon. Here’s an article that basically states both positions on the matter:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/9579/Punitive-Damages-SENDING-MESSAGE-OR-PLAINTIFF-S-WINDFALL.html
vs:
The one critique I do not see in this article is one I’ve been making here - that they are a damn poor means of achieving regulation.
…you don’t know what the word “objectively” means. It isn’t objectively absurd at all. You’ve offered an opinion, thats all.
Why do you think it “ought to be?”
Which directly comparable case are you comparing the Erin Andrews case too?
You didn’t cast aspersions on positions or ideas. You said “No need to belabor the point, but it ought to be obvious to any thinking person that $55 million is an absurd amount to pay in actual damages for invasion of privacy in this case.”
You’ve stated that $55 million is an absurd amount, and that anyone who disagrees is not a thinking person. I disagree. Please stop casting aspersions on people that disagree with you.
Why is malice required?
And so you should.
Liebeck v. McDonald’s puts the lie to this. Not only did she get a payout but McDonalds changed their systems and procedures as well.
The system does not require a wealthy person to “fight for justice”.
In this thread? Have you read it? If that was your target then you need to be very explicit because it takes an extraordinary turn of the head to make the sentence “lucky plaintiff who hit the jury jackpot” not be targeting both the plaintiff in this case and the jury.
I disagree. Awards ought to be based on the gravity of the impact on the victim, not the ability of the perp to pay. Otherwise, old Bill would be paying hugely for wrongs that have trivial impact, merely because he’s hugely wealthy.
Even assuming I agreed with you, that would only prove even more solidly that this particular verdict was unjust.
Note the example I gave - people deliberately killed by public authorities in the US have been awarded less than this plaintiff. Is the contention that the Marriott Hotel is a bigger entity than the government entities that (say) employed cops who deliberately, wrongfully shot people? Something must be wrong with a system that awards a wealthy person ten times more for invasion of privacy, than a poor person for their life.
Also, given that this hotel was jointly and severally liable with the individual creep who spied on her - what about his ability to pay? No way he’s good for 55 million.
You are really reaching to feel insulted. I’m not inclined to argue these points further with you, when I am evidently having perfectly civil and enjoyable debates with others.
He found out what room she was in because he asked the hotel to put him in the room next to her, and they did.
And, if you don’t know the information you need to make the judgment, why did you make the judgment?
OK, I’ll agree that it is inefficient. Better than nothing, though.
It is not a means of achieving regulation at all. It is a different kind of remedy, the only one available that both compensates victims and applies corrective pressure on the industries and institutions it targets.
If you want to achieve regulation, to provide more efficient means to address such problems, the work is cut out for you. Our political climate is not very hospitable to staking out new territories for government regulation. You might point to cases like this as examples of the need, but until your new paradigm regulatory authority is achieved, we should not expect or desire victims to forgo what redress is possible.
Then I apologize for my error – in my defense, I thought Charlie Wayne was claiming that the case hadn’t been finished yet.
Thanks for informing me otherwise, though. :smack:
I think this much is indisputable, in cases where a monetary award is the only consequence.
Not so sure. One would have to weigh the costs of the system against the benefits.
Again, I might point to using international examples: other countries lack the US version of punitive damage regimes and huge jury awards. Are they notably less safe?
Seems to me that’s a highly relevant question.
The latter part – “corrective pressure on the industries and institutions it targets” – is basically what regulation does; only it has a “gap filling” function.
Agreed, changing systems is hard. Agreed, there is no reason for people to change their behavior and avoid using the current system (indeed, it is the very definition of a systemic problem, that rational incentives lead to problematic overall results).
Yet various authorities in the US have long realized that something ought to be done to reign in jury awards - only it has been a very ad hoc, state-by-state affair: see the article I posted, last response.
In other words, you can’t argue with anything he said. He never once said he felt insulted. He just pointed out all the flaws in everything you said.
I never understand these types of posts. It’s basically capitulating while pretending like you aren’t. How the other person acts has no bearing on whether his points are right or wrong.
It’s just a cop out.
You do get extreme variations, which makes the results a bit arbitrary. I’ll grant you that. There is an old saying that if you caused Jackie Onassis to break her arm it would cost a whole lot more than if you broke the arm of a local school teacher. No jury is going to think $10,000 compensates a billionaire for anything, while it is a whole lot of money to most of us. Like most things in life, the tort system works a bit better for those well off to start with.