A hotel incident report might comprise only a few paragraphs. It identifies the guest as the source of the incident, describes the incident, names the responding employees and details the time the management was informed.
This report could raise more questions for attorneys than it can provide an answer. Who was in charge of supervising the employees that were involved? Was surveillance footage preserved? Was the property in compliance with the rules? Are there any interactions that occurred prior to the property which were not reported?
These issues illustrate why litigation involving hospitality often requires an examination of ordinary business records before testimony of witnesses begins.
Begin With the Documents Produced in Normal Operation
Hotels create documents to schedule, train guests service, scheduling and management. Although they weren’t created for litigation, they could help identify how a place operated in the event of a specific incident.
A professional witness in hospitality may examine staffing schedules, and operating procedures as also employee training records or logs of security and footage from surveillance cameras to determine the responsibilities that are assigned to each person. For instance one policy may say that the manager has to respond when an employee notifies them of a drunk client.
The investigation should establish whether the manager was involved, if the report was submitted, and, in light of the evidence, what the response was. It is far more crucial to look at actual actions instead of assuming that written instructions were adhered to or ignored.
The way to interpret restaurant records is different
The employees are divided between the food service, beverage prep as well as customer service and dining room management. This poses a challenge for investigation into restaurant operations. A restaurant expert witness can explain how these responsibilities affect the decisions employees make during service.
Take a look at a dining-room situation involving an individual who had ordered drinks at the bar prior to taking a seat at a table. The bar receipt might document the purchase made at the bar, while transactions in the dining room could record subsequent purchases.
However, the records may not provide a clear picture of what the table server was aware of about the prior service. Combining the server assignments with the transaction times, management notes, and employee records will help to clarify the order. It is important to make distinctions: just because alcohol was purchased doesn’t mean the staff noticed intoxication.
Casino Investigations may require different forms of documentation
Casinos offer beverage services that are different than those that are offered by restaurants. Other sources of information are free drinks as well as mobile cocktail servers, and gaming floor supervisors.
A professional witness from a casino could review the beverage staffing assignments as well as surveillance video including security reports, employees’ communication methods. If drinks are offered in a free service, the receipts from sales traditionally are inadequate.
In such circumstances, an investigation might be heavily based on the surveillance, employee observation and service records as well as the documented procedures of the building. The expert also needs to recognize any weaknesses in the evidence, instead of relying on an insufficient record as proof of a specific event.
Keep the evidence in place until it’s unavailable
The preservation of records that are sensitive is a practical concern for hospitality litigation. Surveillance systems could keep recordings for short periods. The information about employee schedules and internal communication as well as incident records can be stored by different departments or even systems. Attorneys must locate and secure documents that could be relevant as quickly as they can.
The scope of the investigation depends on the nature of the accusations. The scope of an investigation will be contingent on the accusations. The targeted reviews will help you determine what records are essential without assuming that all departments were involved.
Making sense of paperwork is much easier when you have operational experience
Preston Rideout, a hospitality professional since 1996, has experience in the management of nightclubs and bartending in addition to multi-unit drink operations. Rideout Hospitality Consulting is a company he founded in 2010. He has provided advice to on resort, restaurant and hotel owners across the United States.
He has served as an expert witness in a variety of cases involving hotels, casinos, resorts and restaurants for the plaintiffs and defense counsel. The operational background can be useful when interpreting records that may seem simple to someone not familiar with hospitality management.
A schedule of staffing, for example identifies the employees who were assigned to work. Knowing if the assignments offered adequate supervision is dependent on knowing the service model of the facility and its operational conditions.
To make a more convincing case and build a stronger case, you must ask better questions.
Early expert review assists attorneys identify unresolved and documented issues. It can help identify other records worth requesting, help clarify operational terminology for depositions, and determine which employee decisions require a closer look.
There are many reasons why discrepancies may not be indicative of an operational failure. Neither is every policy that shows the proper procedure was followed.
It is the significance of an expert’s analysis that demonstrates these distinctions using established business practices and pertinent evidence. Attorneys preparing for a hospitality lawsuit can benefit from understanding the operation and its employees before interviewing them. This allows for an in-depth review of the events that occurred.