A musician from New Orleans was playing a gig in Atlanta with his jazz band. Tired and weary, at around 2 am he returned to his hotel room. However, before retiring for the night he walked toward his manager’s room to receive payment for the concert. While walking in the outdoor breezeway of the hotel a large Lab/Mastiff dog suddenly charged out an open door and clamped onto the musician’s testicles. He screamed in pain, whereby the dog’s owner got up from his bed and removed the dog from the bloody, distraught musician. The musician with difficulty maneuvered to the hotel lobby. The front desk then contacted an ambulance.
The musician spent several days in the hospital and his injuries took a total of close to a year to completely heal. Moreover, in addition to medical bills, he suffered lost wages for several months, as his testicles remained too swollen for him to travel with the band or play his trumpet in concert, loss of consortium, which caused severe marital discord, and conspicuous pain and suffering.
The owner of the dog was interviewed by the police. During the interview he stated that the musician inadvertently walked into his room, that his door was mostly shut, but cracked open a bit to let in outside air, and that the dog only attacked after the musician entered his room. He also stated that he was sober, has been sober for over a year, and doesn’t use drugs. Meanwhile the police officer commented that the dog owner was blatantly inebriated.
The musician hired a local attorney to sue the dog owner and the hotel. However, suing the dog owner was an exercise in futility. He was indigent. His pockets went no deeper than if he wore yoga pants. Thus, the case wrested upon Plaintiff arguments demonstrating negligence on the part of the hotelier.
In depositions the hotel manager stated that management and employees of the business had no knowledge of the dog’s presence at the hotel, nonetheless the dog’s aggressive propensities. He stated that the dog owner stayed at the hotel for 10 days, declined housekeeping service, moved from room to room every few days, never notified the front desk that he had a dog in his room, and never paid a required pet fee. The hotel’s stance was adamantly that it was not negligent. Consequently, the hotel’s attorney filed a motion for summary judgment.
The Plaintiff’s attorney then hired CPT to counter the Defense motion. CPT prepared an expert witness affidavit that discussed the size of the dog (over 100 lbs.), the fact that interviewed housekeepers refused to enter the dog owner’s room out of fear of the dog, and that the dog owner multiple times per day over a 10-day period walked his dog in the lone grassy area of the hotel property, which was directly in view of the lobby and front desk. The report also argued that even though the hotel never received pet fees from the dog owner, the lack of collection of such fees was indicative of the overall lax management of the hotel staff, especially given that front desk and housekeeping staff were aware of the dog or should have been aware of the dog and that housekeeping was apparently aware of the dog’s aggressive propensities. Moreover, the dog owner stated that he moved from room to room over 10 days not to avoid paying pet fees, but because air conditioners and door locks malfunctioned in each prior room, whereby he requested several room changes. In addition, he stated that he was not aware that he needed to pay a pet fee. Regardless of the truth of the prior statement, the hotel had ample opportunity to observe his dog and yet staff never requested a fee or collected a fee. Furthermore, although housekeeping staff believed the dog was aggressive, based on how it barked when they looked through a window and walked by the door of the room, neither they nor management took action to remove the dog to protect guests of the hotel.
The CPT expert witness affidavit was sufficiently compelling, whereby the Defense motion was denied.
