Sheila Renee White MAYO v. HYATT CORPORATION
898 F.2d 47 (April 10, 1990)
Facts: On February 20, 1987 Jack Mayo, Jr. died. His death was the result of complications pertaining to a fractured skull he suffered three days earlier on February 17 falling down the stairs of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Orleans, where he had been staying. Prior to the fall, Mayo had been drinking heavily off the hotel’s premises. Toxicology reports later confirmed that not only at the time of his fall was Mayo’s blood alcohol content over three times the legal limit but also that he had taken a significant amount of cocaine. Upon returning to the hotel after his night out, Mayo has sought assistance from a hotel security officer in finding his room. Observing that Mayo was extremely intoxicated, the officer attempted to assist Mayo to the hotel’s front desk. The security officer suggested the Mayo take the elevator to the lobby floor. However, Mayo insisted on taken the stairs. The officer then attempted to help Mayo navigate the stairway. Mayo refused the help and proceeded to descend the hotel stairs towards the lobby on his own. At some point during his descent, Mayo lost his balance and fell, hitting his head. Security and hotel staff called for an ambulance for immediate emergency medical services. After being transported to the hospital, however, Mayo passed away.
After his death, Mayo wife brought a negligence action against the Hyatt, arguing that the hotel failed in its duty of care to employee security personnel that would have made sure that Mayo would not have tried to walk down the stairs in such an inebriated state. In other words, the hotel had knowingly employed an incompetent security staff, and but for the staff’s confidence, Mayo would not have injured himself and died. Importantly, the complaint did not allege that the stairway was defective or unmaintained in anyway.
At trial, the court granted Hyatt’s motion for summary judgement stating that Mayo’s wife failed to produce facts or evidence attesting to Hyatt’s negligence. The trial court’s decision, in other words, was a dismissal of the case. Mayo’s wife then appealed to the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit, arguing that the trial court erred in allowing the Hyatt’s motion.
Issue(s): Did the trial court err in finding for the Hyatt in its motion for summary judgement?
Decision: No, the trial court did no err. It correctly applied the law and found that Hyatt’s motion for summary judgment should be granted and the case dismissed.
Reasoning: In order to understand the trial court’s reasoning as well as the Fifth Circuit’s affirmation of the trial court’s decision, it is important to have some understanding of the relevant Louisiana law. Under Louisiana case law, being intoxicated closes of any claims of liability for injuries or harms that were perpetrated by the intoxicated person on himself or others. That is to say, if a plaintiff is drunk, he has only himself to blame for any mishaps that he produces on himself. As the trial court found, this includes bars and bartenders. To be sure, under the law of Louisiana, liability for a bar or bartender serving drinks to an inebriated guest who later injures himself, is only possible in the event that the bar/bartender took some affirmative actions that “increases the peril to the guest as a result of his intoxication” (Mayo). Absent such affirmative actions, a guest could not later sue the bar/bartender for serving them drinks even though they understood that the guest was drunk. Similar, the trial court also found that the same reasoning is also true for hotels. In other words, absent an affirmative action that “increases the peril”, a hotel has no duty to ensure that an inebriated guest protect himself from himself. As the court found, this was logical, as barring a bar from liability for a drunken guest, but imposing liability on a hotel for that same drunken guest would be unreasonable.
Applying these principles to Mayo’s wife’s complaint, and it was, according to the Fifth Circuit, quite easy to affirm the trial court’s decision. Mayo’s wife might have had an argument, if she could show that the condition of the staircase was the reason. In other words, that the stairway was so poorly maintained that the cause for his fall was due to its inadequate condition. However, the fact of the matter is that the hotel stairway was in great conditions and properly maintained. Moreover, Mayo’s wife’s’ complaint agreed that the condition of the hotel stairway was not the issue. Instead, the complaint had argued that a better trained hotel security officer would have done more and perhaps anything he could to stop Mayo from descending thee stairs in his condition, or at least, would have assisted him down the stairs to make sure that he did not fall.
While the trial court agreed that a better trained or experienced officer might very well have saved Mayo’s life; the law does not require a better trained, let alone a poorly trained security officer at all. The only duty that the hotel had to Mayo was to keep its premises free from unreasonable risks and to take not affirmative acts that would have increased the peril of Mayo’s intoxication. According to the trial court, Mayo’s wife pointed to no evidence that satisfied these requirements. First, the stairway was well-maintained. There were no reported falls down the stairway since the opening of the hotel. Moreover, the complaint itself, agreed that the stairway had been properly maintained. Second, there was no affirmative act that increased Mayo’s peril. To be sure, the security officer attempted to help Mayo either by assisting to the elevator to avoid the stairs altogether or physically assist Mayo down the stairs. Mayo refused both attempts at assistance and tried to go down the stairs on his own.
Accordingly, under Louisiana law, the only person at fault in this case was Mayo based on the fact that he voluntarily got himself intoxicated, voluntarily refused assistance, and voluntarily tried to go down the stairs by himself. Consequently, the hotel had no duty of care to protect him from his drunken self. Based on this, and the focus of the complaint, namely that the hotel should have provided a better security guard, the trial court was indeed correct in granting the Hyatt’s motion for summary judgement. That is to say, Mayo’s wife provided no evidence of an affirmative act taken by the Hyatt that caused him to fall because he was drunk.
Works Cited
Mayo v. Hyatt, 898 f.2d 47. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 1990. Web. http://www.openjurist.org/898/f2d/47/mayo-v-hyatt-corporation
