Skip to Content

When you stay at a hotel for business or pleasure, you likely don’t give much thought to your safety. After all, the hotel is a commercial enterprise that is predicated on providing its guests with the comforts of home. Unfortunately, not all hotels maintain their premises and provide services as safely as they should, and dangerous accidents can be the result. If you’ve been injured in a hotel accident that was caused by the hotel’s negligence, turn to the professional legal counsel of an experienced Florida hotel accident lawyer.

 

The Standard of Care Owed

Hotels are responsible for providing their guests with a reasonable standard of care that includes all of the following components:

 

  • Maintaining the entire premises (where guests are allowed access) in a reasonably safe condition
  • Hiring an adequate number of employees and ensuring that they are trained appropriately
  • Providing adequate warning regarding any potentially hazardous conditions
  • Serving alcohol responsibly
  • Ensuring that sanitary food service conditions are maintained
  • Safeguarding the private property and private information of guests

 

Common Areas of Concern

While hotel accidents can take any number of dangerous forms, there are several types of serious accidents that are most common. 

 

Elevator and Escalator Accidents

While elevators and escalators are a considerable convenience, they are immense machines with a complicated array of working parts that must be carefully calibrated and well maintained. When hotels fail to put the necessary effort into maintaining their elevators and escalators, guests can pay a high price. Elevator and escalator accidents happen, and they are often quite dangerous. 

 

Inadequate Security

When hotels fail to provide adequate security throughout their buildings, parking lots, parking structures, and walkways, it makes it that much easier for crimes to occur. While criminals are legally responsible for their own actions, hotels can be held responsible for not providing adequate security measures. Concerns such as faulty locks, inadequate lighting, lack of security cameras, and absent security guards can all leave guests at undue risk. 

 

Slip and Falls

Some of the most common – and the most dangerous – hotel accidents are slip and fall accidents, which can have any number of causes, including:

 

  • Overly slippery floor surfaces, such as highly polished marble
  • Spills that are left unattended
  • Moisture and debris tracked in from outdoors
  • Staircases that are poorly designed, constructed, or maintained and/or that have inadequate lighting

 

Burns 

Burns are very serious injuries that are also exceptionally painful, and hotels have a responsibility to protect their guests from burn injuries by ensuring that water temperatures are not allowed to climb too high, by protecting guests from hot serving dishes in their buffets, by ensuring that their electrical systems are up to code, and much more. 

 

Accidents Caused by Malfunctioning Exercise Equipment

Hotels often offer their guests gyms, which is a great perk when they are safely maintained. Gyms incorporate heavy machinery that can be exceptionally dangerous when it isn’t safely maintained and used properly. When hotels do not put adequate effort into keeping their gyms in safe working order – and into ensuring that children are not allowed to wander in unattended – they endanger guests. 

 

Transportation Accidents

Many hotels offer shuttle services for their guests, and these services represent an immense responsibility that includes having well-maintained vehicles, hiring safe, experienced drivers who adhere to the rules of the road, and more. If you are injured in a shuttle accident in which your shuttle driver is at fault, the hotel may ultimately be held responsible. 

 

Swimming Pool Accidents

Swimming pools present far too many opportunities for dangerous accidents to happen. When hotels fail to have adequate warning signs related to the inherent risks involved, fail to ensure that guests are not vulnerable to their pools’ filtering systems; fail to clearly post the safety rules that apply; and/or fail to ensure that children are not able to wander in unattended, they increase the risk that serious pool accidents will happen. 

 

Your Premises Liability Claim

In the State of Florida, hotels are responsible for maintaining their property in a reasonably safe condition – and this standard correlates with the standard that other hotels reasonably maintain under similar situations. When you are a guest at a hotel, you are considered an invitee, and this means the duty of care that is owed to you is considerable. If you are injured in a hotel accident, your claim will hinge on your ability to demonstrate the following:

 

  • The hotel was aware of – or reasonably should have been aware of – the hazardous condition that caused you to be injured.
  • The hotel failed to adequately address the hazardous condition that caused you to be injured. 

 

If you have been injured in a hotel accident, obtaining the compensation to which you are entitled is critical to your ability to recover fully. 

 

Your Damages

If you have been injured in a hotel accident, you can seek damages for your physical, financial, and emotional losses. 

 

Medical Costs

Your medical expenses can include all the following:

 

  • Emergency care and emergency transportation
  • Surgical care and aftercare
  • Medical treatments, tests, and procedures 
  • Care from doctors, specialists, and other medical professionals
  • Rehabilitation
  • Physical therapy
  • Occupational therapy
  • Pain management
  • Prescription medications

 

Lost Earnings

Serious injuries typically lead to time spent off the job, which translates to lost earnings, and if your injuries affect your ability to do your job, your earning potential can also be affected.

 

Pain and Suffering

It is important not to lose sight of the physical and emotional pain and suffering that you’ve been forced to endure as a result of the hotel’s negligence. 

 

Don’t Delay Making the Call to an Experienced Florida Hotel Accident Lawyer

The savvy hotel accident lawyers at Iscoe Law Firm have earned an impressive reputation helping hotel accident victims throughout Miami, West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Fort Lauderdale, and Broward County, and we’re here for you, too. To learn more, please don’t wait to contact us online or call us at 800-800-6500 today (we’re available to pick up your call 24 hours a day – 365 days a year).

Skip to content
This site is registered on wpml.org as a development site. Switch to a production site key to remove this banner.