Take action against a hotel for negligence in accommodating a disabled guest? My wife has diagnosed C-PTSD which her doctors have classified as a disability. She also lives with another disability related to a spinal injury which makes it difficult for her to walk. We are staying at a resort hotel in which we discovered sound readily transfers through the floors. This is evident due to frequent stomping above our room last night, and today when the cleaning crew presumably started work. She got up around 3:00AM this morning to work on packing and cleaning our room. Around that time I also called reception to send us towels. A few minutes later the phone in our room rang, and I answered because I assumed it was reception calling us. The caller was actually another guest who I assume was in the room below us. He sounded intoxicated and was berating me for making sounds &quot;like an elephant.&quot; I politely stated that if I had done anything to disturb him, I apologize. He hung up the phone. I was shocked he was able to call our room directly and this scenario was extremely triggering for my wife's PTSD symptoms. This was an extremely disturbing incident which the hotel failed to provide the level of security and safety that could reasonably be expected at a five star hotel. We had actually been moved to this current room due to an incident that occurred the previous day. Since my wife is a survivor of a violent sexual assault, and especially because the assailant is still at large awaiting a criminal and civil resolution, when we arrived she was very specific and clear with the concierge in requesting a room that would be secure and that the staff would use discretion in being sensitive to her situation. The concierge mentioned that our room would have a balcony. The concierge did not explain that the balcony is adjacent to an exterior breezeway and elevator lobby which is separated by an easily climbable partition wall about 42 inches tall. Anyone in the breezeway could easily access the door to the patio by climbing over the wall. There were undeniably alternative rooms available featuring isolated balconies that are inaccessible to guests outside the room. So we are puzzled as to why we were assigned to a room with two easily accessible entry points. Over the course of a few hours we noticed a guest in the breezeway who walked by several times while into our room looking through the sliding door on the patio, which was unnerving to put it mildly. This is the reason we requested to be assigned to a different room. In summary, and without going into further detail, we are looking at the big picture of the hotel failing to accommodate a guest with disabilities, the nature of which was made explicit upon our arrival. From our perspective, they put a guest who struggles with PTSD in more than one situation which excessively exacerbated the symptoms of her condition, and furthermore allowed a guest to harass us over the symptoms of her physical disability (i.e. difficulty walking and allegedly making noise &quot;like an elephant&quot;). Additionally, as a result of these incidents, we have been unable to take full advantage of the amenities and services we have paid for due to her symptoms being exacerbated and preventing both of us from sleeping. We have a meeting with a manager this afternoon. Depending on the results, we are considering escalating the matter to the corporate level. Just wanted to get some constructive feedback on this scenario. Do we have any standing to look at taking legal action? And what type of attorney would we contact who might be familiar with relevant circumstances? Thanks in advance for any feedback. To clarify location--these events occurred in California, United States.
You have &quot;standing&quot; to take legal action, given the particularized injury you've suffered. If you're interested in doing so, you would talk to a civil-rights or disability-rights lawyer. There are plenty of lawyers who specialize in this sort of work, so you should make sure you're talking to someone who is well-versed in these laws. However, I suspect that you'll find that you are not on particularly strong footing as a legal matter. It is not clear that your wife is &quot;disabled&quot; as defined by the ADA, which asks how an impairment affects your life functions rather than whether your doctor believes you are impaired. I'm not sure what the status of this question is in California, but some courts have ruled that PTSD is not always a disability within the meaning of the statute. See, e.g., Tinsley v. Caterpillar Fin. Servs., Corp., 766 F. App'x 337, 342 (6th Cir. 2019) (&quot;We must now examine whether Tinsley's PTSD sufficiently limited her ability to perform a class of jobs or a broad range of jobs. The evidence demonstrates that it did not.&quot;). But even if she is disabled within the meaning of the statute, that doesn't necessarily mean the hotel has done anything wrong. The ADA does not require hotels to give disabled guests whatever rooms they want; it only requires them to make &quot;reasonable accommodations&quot; for their guests' disabilities. If I were representing the hotel, I'd feel pretty good arguing that creating a perfectly secluded environment and reprogramming the hotel phone system to prevent unforeseeable triggering events is not a reasonable accommodation. However, a good ADA lawyer could probably come up with some good arguments why the hotel should have done more. But the final problem is that lawyers may not be particularly interested in the case because it sounds like a very low-damages situation. That said, this analysis is only under the ADA, which is what I'm already familiar with. California quite likely has its own disability-accommodation laws, and I'd bet they're more favorable to the disabled than the ADA. You'd need to talk to a local disability-lawyer to get a full understanding of your rights.
Most leases have a provision allowing a landlord to make entry without notice in an emergency, but the better course of action, as noted in a comment by @BlueDogRanch, is to call the police and ask them to make a &quot;welfare check.&quot; You would ordinarily be permitted to cooperate with police by unlocking doors in furtherance of their welfare check. The police are trained to do this properly in a way that properly balances the need to aid someone who is sick or ill, the need to preserve evidence if there was a death or crime that needs to be understood legally, and to protect the legitimate privacy interests of the tenant. You are not. You could incur liability for failing to prevent death or aggravating injury, could be wrongfully implicated if physical evidence from you contaminates the scene or you destroy evidence showing the true cause, and could be sued for invading the tenant's privacy if it was found that you entry was unreasonable and that it wasn't really an emergency, which is always easier to conclude with 20/20 hindsight. As it is, your biggest potential source of liability is delaying in calling the police seeking a welfare check. They often respond quite quickly to these by the way, although it is not the very highest priority for law enforcement.
This depends on the nature of the "ban" ---i.e., who issued it, what legal power they have, and what it actually requires you to refrain from doing. You say it is "their ban" so I am going to assume that this is just a decision that the store has made not to allow you entry. If it is indeed the store itself that has "banned" you, this would not prevent you from calling them to apologise for whatever you did. Calling a business on the phone cannot generally be considered a trespass --- at most, if you were to repeatedly call and harass a business over and over again, it might give rise to a nuisance suit. Unless you have extremely strange laws in your jurisdiction, it is almost certainly not against the law for you to call a business that has banned you, a fortiori if this phone call is made for the purposes of apologising for whatever you did that led to the ban. Although it does not appear to be the situation in this case, if this ban was an actual restraining order of some kind issued by a Court, then it might indeed prevent you from contacting the business (in which case breaching it would lead to an action for contempt of court, not trespass). If a Court were to issue you with an injunction or restraining order of some kind to ban you from a business, then that instrument would specify what you are prevented from doing. You would then need to be very careful to comply with that order. In short: there is a great deal of difference between a "ban" made by a store as the owner of property, and a ban issued by a court through an injunction or restraining order.
While I don't like agreeing with a landlord, you are in the right here. Your tenants do not have the right to access the property now they have moved out. If they were still living there things would be different and it would be reasonable for them to fix minor damage (to preserve their deposit). They did not do so. Get the damage fixed professionally, keep all reciepts, and take it out of the deposit.
The landlord may be confused about what is legal. Growing pot without a license (they do not have one: it cannot be grown at home, and certainly not if there is a minor present) is not legal, not even in Seattle (medical marijuana now requires a general marijuana license, and home-grown is not legal – some Dept. of Health pages don't reflect the new law). Under RCW 59.18.065, the landlord must provide a copy of the executed agreement to each tenant, and a replacement copy on request. Under RCW 59.18.150, the landlord may enter the unit in case of an emergency, and otherwise shall give the tenant at least two days' written notice of his or her intent to enter and shall enter only at reasonable times. The notice must state the exact time and date or dates of entry or specify a period of time during that date or dates in which the entry will occur, in which case the notice must specify the earliest and latest possible times of entry. The notice must also specify the telephone number to which the tenant may communicate any objection or request to reschedule the entry. The tenant shall not unreasonably withhold consent to the landlord to enter the dwelling unit at a specified time where the landlord has given at least one day's notice of intent to enter to exhibit the dwelling unit to prospective or actual purchasers or tenants A lease cannot be terminated without cause and a legal process (eviction hearing), rather, it runs out at a specific time (the end of July). The situation with dog-washing is unclear, since normally a landlord can't decide to use a person's apartment for a dog-washing operation (the common law right to quiet enjoyment). If there is such a clause in the lease then that would be allowed, but they can't now decide that they have this right (the terms of a lease can't be changed in the middle). They can restrict the cats from areas outside your unit. You may however have some (legal) misunderstanding about what exactly "your unit" is, specifically, is the dog wash part of a "common area" that isn't actually part of what you have an exclusive right to.
If the landlord gave you a key, and you can not give it back to him he has every right to charge you for correcting the oversight. I put to you that if you can't provide it back to him, he can't be certain that it has not fallen into the wrong hands, and he would be prudent to change the lock - and indeed, he may not even have another copy of the key in which case he really does not have a lot of alternatives. If you look at the section on "Claims for Damages or Loss" pdf there is a section B - Damage which confirms that Loss includes less tangible impacts including "loss of a service or facility provided under the tenancy agreement" Section C of the same document goes on to assert that "The purpose of compensation is to put the person who suffered the damage or loss in the same position as if the damage or loss had not occurred". There is arguably a question of the amount of loss suffered, and they can't sting you for punitive damages, but they can charge you a reasonable amount to get a new key cut (or possibly to replace the lock) - but that was not your question, and would probably arise if the amount he charges was unreasonable in the circumstance. Depending on if he has already taken action - and if not, how much the bill would be - promptly remedying the breach by finding and returning the key or equivalent action might save you some money.
It is the tenant's responsibility to understand the written contract. Oral statements about the contract do have to be consistent with the written contract (that is, in the context where you ask the landlord what a particular clause means before signing -- not in the case where you are modifying an existing contract). If I were renting a room and the contract says "Du må betale $1000 hver dag", which I don't understand because my Norwegian is terrible, I would ask about this, and the landlord might say that it means "You must pay $1000 every month", which could be a decent deal. Actually, the clause says "You must pay $1000 every day". When the reality of the situation becomes clear, then it is obvious that we didn't have an agreement in the first place. Perhaps he mis-spoke, or his English is as bad as my Norwegian, but I would not be held to rate in the written contract, assuming that I could back up my claim that he gave me that interpretation: the lease would probably be voided, as not an actual agreement. The underlying principle is that there has to be a "meeting of the minds" where the parties understand what they will get and what they must give, and there was a demonstrable failure of understanding. On the other hand, if I sign a contract without really reading it carefully, and there is a clause in English (which I speak) saying that I have to pay $1000 a day, but I didn't really think about the clause so that in a sense I didn't understand what I had agreed to, well, I may still be on the hook. (On the third hand, a court would probably say that's a ridiculous rent and void the contract on policy grounds). In general, "not my first language" is not a get-out-of-contract card, though attempts to trick people into signing documents in languages that they really have no understanding of won't be successful. Virtually nobody but a lawyer actually understands contractual language, yet contracts are enforced all the time. A contract can be explicitly modified by verbal agreement, or can be entirely verbal, but oral agreements face evidence problems, namely, what exactly did A and B say? It's scientifically well established that parties can be morally certain that the conversation went "A" (for one person) and "Not A" (for the other person). Using "could" rather than "would" in speech makes a huge difference in interpretation. There is a rule, the parol evidence rule, which essentially says that unless there is a good reason to not do so, the contract as written is what is enforced. Even if the conversation had been written into the contract, there's no basis in the contract for objectively determining whether a thing is old and "just broke". So even as an additional clause in the contract, it doesn't afford you a clear escape hatch. You might be able to prove with expert testimony that indeed the pipes had been corroding for a hundred years, and you could not have caused the pipes to burst.
In the case of the US, the only anti-discrimination laws that would cover an event is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, under the rubric "public accommodation", in Title II. But that law does not prohibit sex discrimination. The extent of "public accommodation" is not clearly defined, but generally is held to be about "a place", and would include "entrance into this facility". It might be illegal in California, though, since the Unruh Civil Rights Act is more generic, not excluding sex on this point. The main issue would be whether this organization is a "business".