When a hotel or motel is legally responsible for an assault on its property is answered on the hotel and motel page, including the Chapter 98 route where trafficking is involved.
This article is about what would prove it. Nothing below is a promise that a particular record exists at a particular property. Each item is a question, and each question has an answer that the property can give.
The lock and key system
Whether the lock system at this property has an audit function, and what it recorded, is a question to put to the property. If it does, the things worth asking about are which cards were presented at which door, whether the door opened, when, which cards were issued and to whom, and whether a master was used.
A log of that kind, where one exists, answers questions no witness can. Whether a key was issued to a room that was not the holder's. How many times a door was tried. When someone entered and when they left.
Ask separately whether any such log is generated by a lock vendor's system rather than by hotel staff, because a vendor is a different holder from the hotel.
The front desk record
Ask what front desk records the property holds. The categories worth naming are the night audit, the folio, the registration record, any parking or valet log, and shift notes.
Where those exist they can show who was registered, who was added to a room, what was paid for and how, and what a guest reported and to whom.
What the property knew before
The claim is not about the assault alone. It is about what the property had seen before and what it did.
That is the foreseeability inquiry from Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, measured by the proximity, recency, frequency, similarity and publicity of prior crimes and weighed together rather than in isolation; Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith holding those factors are not the only route; and UDR Texas Properties, L.P. v. Petrie holding that foreseeability alone is not enough and that the response must also be shown unreasonable in light of the burden of preventing the harm.
For a hotel that history could sit in several places at once. Law enforcement records for the address. Prior guest incident reports. Complaints made to the front desk, to a brand customer line, or in public reviews. Maintenance records for locks, exterior doors, stairwells and lighting. Staffing records showing who was actually on the property overnight.
The camera questions
Whether cameras existed, whether they worked, whether anyone was watching, what area they covered, and what was retained are five separate questions. All five have answers held by the hotel, and how long anything is kept is a question for that property and its vendor rather than something this page will assume.
Two companies, not one
The sign on the building may not be the company that owns it. A hotel flying a national brand may be owned and run by a franchisee unrelated to the brand, and the brand and the franchisee are different entities with different arguments. That is flagged on the hotel page and covered in how many defendants there are.
Which entity to ask is itself an early question. Operating material is the franchisee's side: the night audit, staffing, maintenance, incident reports. Brand-level material is the brand's side: any inspection or quality reports, the standards the property agreed to meet, the franchise agreement, and any central complaint line.
A brand inspection report noting a security deficiency at a property, written before an assault happened there, would be a document about knowledge created by the brand about its own franchisee. Whether one exists is exactly the kind of question to ask early.
Where trafficking is involved
Section 98.002(a) of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code makes liable a defendant who engages in the trafficking of persons "or who intentionally or knowingly benefits from participating in a venture that traffics another person." Section 98.002(b) provides that it is not a defense that a defendant "has been acquitted or has not been prosecuted or convicted under Chapter 20A, Penal Code." Section 98.005 provides that such a defendant found liable for any amount is jointly liable with any other defendant for the entire amount of damages arising from the trafficking, and Section 98.003 makes court costs and reasonable attorney's fees part of what a prevailing claimant is awarded.
In that setting the questions shift toward pattern: whether the property recorded bookings and payment, who occupied a room rented by someone else, refused housekeeping, complaints from adjacent rooms, and what staff reported to management. The firm's page is human trafficking civil claims.
What you can do now
Secure what is already yours before anything else. The reservation confirmation and the email it arrived in. Anything on a card statement. Any loyalty account record you can still download. Photographs of the room, the hallway, the door, the lock. Texts sent that night. The room number and the name of anyone at the desk.
Write down the date and the property's full address, including which of several similarly named locations it was.
One thing not to do. Do not ask the hotel for its own records before you have spoken to a lawyer. That request is better made by a lawyer, for the reasons set out on the apartment complex article.
The clock
A negligence claim against the property carries two years under Section 16.003 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code. Claims arising from the specific offenses listed in Section 16.0045 carry thirty years or five.
Which period reaches which defendant depends on the conduct alleged against that defendant. A claim against a property may be on the two year period even where a claim against the person who committed the assault is not. That has to be calculated on your dates rather than assumed, and what affects those periods is in what stops the clock.
There is no charge for the conversation and no attorney's fee unless there is a recovery.
Call 713-521-0059.
Authorities
Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1998)
Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762 (Tex. 2010)
UDR Texas Properties, L.P. v. Petrie, 517 S.W.3d 98 (Tex. 2017)
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 98 (trafficking)
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 16 (limitations)
This article is general information about Texas law, not legal advice about your situation, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.