Michael Fenton admits he’s an alcoholic. He went on a two-day bender at the Marco Island Marriott Resort and Spa last January. In an inebriated state, he then plunged over a stairway some 100 feet. Now, he’s suing the hotel for serving an addict and causing his brain damage.
Fenton...is suing Marriott International Inc. and Marriott Hotel Services Inc., claiming that the bartender knowingly served a person who was addicted to alcohol, despite pleas by his family.
The lawsuit says Fenton got wasted in the hotel bar on January 17, 2008, and his family told the bartender to stop serving him. The bartender complied and Mr. Fenton went to his room to sleep it off.
But the next day, the lawsuit says, he went to the bar and was again served a substantial number of drinks and drank most of the day into the evening.
“The bartender continued serving him even though he was visibly intoxicated,” the lawsuit says. “Family members found Michael Fenton in the bar that evening and requested the bartender to stop serving him. The bartender ignored the request and continued serving him.”
Fenton then went to the “large, double-sided grand open stairwell” on the second floor to go to the bathroom on the first floor. As he tried to negotiate the first several steps, he fell over the handrail to the ground floor and suffered severe and permanent brain damage.
And just for good measure, the plaintiff is claiming the staircase "did not meet state and county building codes or industry standards."
Marco Island's chief code compliance officer, Eric Waddle, sums up my thoughts exactly:
“A building couldn’t have been approved if it didn’t meet code."
One of the accusations against the hotel is, I kid you not, "serving an alcoholic." If you could sue hotels in small towns every time they served an alcoholic in the bar, hotels would cease to exist. Alcoholics and hotel bars go together like Jack and Coke--ERRRRR, I mean, peanut butter and jelly.
Given the strong underlying theme of personal responsibility here, I have a feeling the first question jurors (especially Florida jurors) would ask is: If the family is so concerned about this severe alcoholic, why are they leaving him alone, unsupervised, in a hotel bar for "most of the day into the evening?"
That's like claiming you're terribly concerned about your suicidal teenager, but not bothering to clear the house of guns, knives and rope.
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1 comment:
Looking at the state of affairs in our once great USA leaves me no other conclusion than to agree that personal responsibility is indeed DEAD.
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