Taieb v. Hilton Hotels Corp.

• Decision Date: 17 November 1987
• Citation: 131 A.D.2d 257,520 N.Y.S.2d 776
• Parties: Bella TAIEB and Maurice Taieb, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. HILTON HOTELS CORPORATION and The New York Hilton, Inc., Defendants- Respondents.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

Page 776

520 N.Y.S.2d 776

131 A.D.2d 257

Bella TAIEB and Maurice Taieb, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. HILTON HOTELS CORPORATION and The New York Hilton, Inc. Defendants- Respondents.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division First Department.

Nov. 17, 1987.

Michael V. Kaplen, of counsel (David Jaroslawicz, New York City), for plaintiffs-appellants.

Anthony E. Satula, Jr., of counsel (Marvin V. Ausubel and Jessica R. Friedman with him on brief, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, New York City), for defendants-respondents.

Before MURPHY, P.J., and KUPFERMAN, CARRO, MILONAS and ROSENBERGER, JJ.

ROSENBERGER, Justice:

On the evening of August 13, 1979, appellants Bella and Maurice Taieb were in their corner room on the 38th floor of the New York Hilton Hotel when a minor fire broke out several stories below them. Hearing sirens, Mr. Taieb looked out of the window and saw several fire engines stop and park around the hotel. Aware of the fact that several weeks before 48 persons had died in a hotel fire in Spain, Mr. Taieb urged his wife to hurry and finish dressing while he went down the hall to alert their children. The Taiebs at first went to the elevator but there was smoke inside it and they saw a sign directing guests to use the stairway in case of fire. Although no fire alarm was sounded, the Taiebs proceeded down the cement stairway where they were joined by more and more people as they descended. The group on the stairs was moving very fast and, on the 15th floor, Mr. Taieb told his wife to remove her shoes so that she could keep up with them. The Taiebs did not encounter any hotel personnel in the stairwell on their descent to the lobby. By the time they were out on the street Mrs. Taieb, who was taking medication for high blood pressure, was in pain and her left foot and leg began to swell. She was subsequently treated by a doctor in New York whom the hotel recommended and, upon her return to France, she allegedly underwent treatment for phlebitis.

Appellants instituted this action against respondent Hilton Hotels Corporation and the New York Hilton, Inc., seeking damages for the permanent injury allegedly suffered by Mrs. Taieb and for her husband's loss of services and support. The jurors unanimously found that respondents were negligent and that this negligence was the proximate cause of Mrs. Taieb's injuries. They awarded $150,000 to Mrs. Taieb and $20,000 to her husband. On appeal to Appellate Term, 132 Misc.2d 892, 506 N.Y.S.2d 810, the jury verdict was reversed and the complaint dismissed.

Appellate Term, in reversing the jury's verdict, concluded that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding of negligence. However, this conclusion rests on a misreading of the record and is clearly contradicted by the documents offered in evidence at trial. Appellate Term also determined, as a matter of law, that "the hotel's overall response to the fire was reasonable" despite testimony from appellants' expert witness to the contrary which raised a triable question of fact for the jury.

The Court of Appeals has spelled out the critical distinction between the factual determination by an appellate court that a jury verdict was against the weight of the evidence, in which case reversal results in a new trial, and the legal determination that the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, in which case a final judgment dismissing the complaint is entered (Randolph v. City of New York, 69 N.Y.2d 844, 514 N.Y.S.2d 705, 507 N.E.2d 298 [1987]; Cohen v. Hallmark Cards, 45 N.Y.2d 493, 498-499, 410 N.Y.S.2d 282, 382 N.E.2d 1145 [1978] ). To conclude as a matter of law that the evidence is not sufficient to support the jury's verdict, essentially the court must find that the evidence does not present a valid question of fact for the jury (45 N.Y.2d at 499, 410 N.Y.S.2d 282, 382 N.E.2d 1145). In this case, we find that appellants presented sufficient evidence to raise triable questions of fact regarding respondents' negligence for the outbreak and spread of the fire and the actions of hotel employees to insure the safety of the guests after they learned of the fire.

While it is true that a hotel keeper is not an insurer of the guests' personal safety, at common law the hotel keeper has a duty to exercise reasonable care for the guests' safety (Friedman v. Shindler's Prairie House, Inc., 224 App.Div. 232, 234, 230 N.Y.S. 44 [3d Dept., 1928], affd. 250 N.Y. 574, 166 N.E. 329 [1929] ). "One who collects a large number of people for gain or profit must be vigilant to protect them" (Tantillo v. Goldstein Bros. Amusement Co., 248 N.Y. 286, 290, 162 N.E. 82 [1928]; Tapley v. Ross Theatre Corp., 275 N.Y. 144, 9 N.E.2d 812 [1937] ). The duty to safeguard hotel guests from known danger persists even if the danger arose through no fault attributable to the hotel keeper. In Owen v. Straight, 242 App.Div. 892, 893, 275 N.Y.S. 1000, revd. on other grounds, 267 N.Y. 453, 196 N.E. 395 [1935], the Court of Appeals held that "irrespective of the origin of the fire, it was a question of fact whether the defendant had used reasonable care to safeguard his guests." We find that, in this case, the evidence was sufficient not only for the jury to find that the origin of the fire was attributable to respondents' negligence but also that appellant failed to take reasonable precautions to safeguard the guests from injury in their attempt to escape what they believed to be a life-threatening situation in a high rise building.

Appellate Term found that the initial cause of the fire at respondent's hotel was unknown. The Operations Report filed by the New York City Fire Department personnel who responded to the alarm does not indicate a cause for the rubbish fire which originated in the lobby level utility room. However, the Bureau of Fire Investigation Report prepared the following day lists the cause of the fire as "accidental/careless smoking". There was no evidence to contradict this official conclusion as to the cause of the blaze.

The Fire Investigation report also states that the fire spread from the trash chute to linen in the adjacent linen chute due to cracked chute insulation. The Operations Report indicates that the flames "ignited the dust and lint which had collected over the years" and a "light to medium smoke condition" resulted on most of the upper floors of the hotel due to the smoldering fires in the shaft from the fourth through eighth floors. This extension of the fire "via accumulations of lint and dust in [the] utility shaft" was confirmed by the Bureau of Fire Investigation.

Respondents called Julius Ferrara the building superintendent in charge of maintenance and engineering for the hotel. As assistant building superintendent in 1979, Mr. Ferrara hired outside contractors to perform cleaning services in the hotel. It was his testimony that the laundry and linen chutes from the 44th floor to the lobby had been cleaned in April 1979, four months before the fire. Prior to that cleaning, they were last cleaned in October 1978. The hotel business records introduced by respondents, however, contradict this testimony. The hotel Service Record for 1974 through 1983, as well as the individual invoices from the Fire Proofing Corp. of America which did the cleaning indicate that in April 1979 the linen shaft was cleaned from the fourth floor to the lobby only, for which the hotel was billed $259. According to these records, the linen and trash chutes from the 44th floor to the lobby were last cleaned in October 1978, ten months before the fire. The hotel was charged $2,050 for this cleaning. Nevertheless, Appellate Term erroneously stated that "records produced by the hotel show that the linen chute from the 44th floor down to the lobby closet was cleaned about four months prior to the fire." (132 Misc.2d, at 894, 506 N.Y.S.2d 810, supra.)

It was established that the area in which the fire started and the route by which it spread...