Hotel, Resort & Vacation Accident Lawyer

If you have been injured or harmed in an incident at a hotel or resort, you need an experienced and dedicated hotel accident lawyer on your side when you file a personal injury claim. The attorneys of Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman consist of 14 full-time award-winning attorneys, and all three named partners are named to “Best Lawyers” by US News & World Report.

The personal injury lawyers at our law firm are seasoned veterans and are the recipients of multiple coveted industry awards. We have four attorneys with over 25 years of experience each and our founder was named “Lawyer of the Year”® in Admiralty & Maritime 2020 (Miami) by US News & World Report. 

If you or a loved one has suffered a personal injury in a hotel accident, contact our law firm as soon as possible to connect with an experienced personal injury lawyer for a free consultation. During this initial consultation, we will discuss the specifics of your accident and explain to you how we will fight to ensure that the liable parties are held accountable for your hotel accident.  Our singular goal is to obtain for you the maximum compensation available under the law.   

When working with our law firm, you can count on a strong attorney-client relationship where your accident lawyer will fight for your legal rights as aggressively as possible.

Read more about the importance of legal representation after a hotel injury, whether on a business trip or traveling for pleasure. Contact our law office for legal advice from a proven hotel accident lawyer and get started on your case today.

We Made Our Name Suing Cruise Lines – Hotel & Resort Accidents Are Surprisingly Similar

At Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, P.A., we’re famous for the results we’ve achieved over the past 50 years primarily for cruise line injury lawsuits, but that’s not all we do. Foreign hotel and resort lawsuits are quite similar to cruise ship lawsuits in many ways. If you think about it, a cruise ship is much like a gigantic floating hotel. There are plenty of activities to partake in, thousands of strangers to mingle with, and the commensurate levels of crime and mischief that go along with a population the size of a small city.

Whether you’re at sea or in a hotel lobby, being the victim of a crime or accident in a foreign country is scary and confusing, and many of the same complications and restrictions apply to each of these types of cases. 

Virtually any cruise ship you vacation on will be sailing under the flag of a foreign country, where different laws may apply, and the situation is similar in a cruise ship at port, on a shore excursion, or staying at a foreign hotel or resort. 

The team at Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, P.A. is well-versed in these types of hotel accident cases, and our cruise ship experience is invaluable when dealing with a premises liability claim against a foreign resort. If you have suffered severe injuries in a hotel accident, we are here to help you obtain the maximum compensation you deserve against the hotel property owners.

Lawsuits Against Foreign Resorts

If you’ve been injured in an incident at a resort in a foreign country, your case may be challenging and present many complications.

This is primarily because different countries naturally have different laws and legal systems. If you were to file a lawsuit in a foreign court, the country’s laws regarding personal injury claims might dictate that you are only eligible to receive very little financial redress for things such as hotel injuries and other premises liability issues. 

Consequently, you will almost certainly want to file a lawsuit in a U.S. court, but this may present jurisdictional challenges.

To give a U.S. court jurisdiction over your hotel accident case, you must prove that the defendant (typically either the hotel owner or hotel property owner) is present in the jurisdiction in which you are filing, that the defendant lives or works in the jurisdiction, that the defendant maintains “minimum contact” with the jurisdiction, or that the defendant agrees to the chosen court being given jurisdiction.  This is a legal battle we are extremely well versed in successfully fighting.

Minimum contact means that the defendant has a singificant connection to the jurisdiction in which the lawsuit is being brought, such as doing business within the jurisdiction where your injury occurred. 

Hotel and Resort Cases We Handle

• Rape and Sexual Assault
• Drownings
• Parasailing Accidents 
  
• Excursions 
  
• Boating, Yacht, Sailing and Jet Ski Accidents
• Wrongful Death 
  
• Slip and Fall & Trip and Fall Accidents 

Likewise, many resorts have a range of hazards that can cause trip and fall hotel accidents, even in your hotel room. Rugs that are not flat against the floor or various obstacles in hallways or stairwells may cause guests to trip and fall, potentially leading to serious injury. 

If the staff at a hotel or resort allows obstacles or dangerous conditions such as bunched-up rugs in walking areas that should be safe and free of hazards that may cause a guest to trip and fall, the hotel or resort may be liable for resultant injuries.

Other risks include improper lighting, food poisoning, broken, faulty stairways, assaults or robberies due to inadequate security, and even elevator accidents, all of which your hotel accident lawyer will fight to ensure that the property owner is held liable for. 

Pre-Ride Release and Waiver Forms

In some cases, guests are asked or required to sign a waiver releasing the hotel, resort, or activity operators from liability for common accidents caused on their property. You may think this means that if you signed something similar, you have given up your right to sue in case of an accident, but luckily, that is not necessarily the case.

Waivers and releases may impose some restrictions on what you can sue for, but you are still permitted to sue a company for negligence even after signing a waiver. A liability clause does not protect a company from all lawsuits or enable it to operate with impunity. Companies still must follow the same laws that everyone else is subject to and make an effort to keep guests on their property reasonably safe. Hotel negligence is not necessarily excusable because of a release.

The company uses forms such as these because they want you to think that signing away your rights via a waiver prohibits you from suing them if you suffer an injury, but such clauses are not universally enforceable. Even if you’ve signed a waiver before participating in a potentially dangerous activity, the company may still be held liable for your injuries if they acted negligently and did not take reasonable steps to protect your safety and prevent injury. 

Working with a liability lawyer is the best way to make sense of these documents and determine how you can seek the compensation you rightfully deserve.

Hotels and Resorts that We’ve Successfully Sued

1. Sandals

   Our lawyers have brought a class action lawsuit against Sandals Resorts, alleging that the company charged customers what was supposed to be a sales tax but was in fact never remitted to the government and was kept by Sandals as an additional profit, thus overcharging the customers fraudulently.

2. Atlantis

   We’ve sued the Atlantis resort at Paradise Island, Bahamas for negligence relating to hygienic practices after a guest was given a room infested with bed bugs and suffered hundreds of bites.

3. Marriott

   We’ve sued the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort & Spa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico after a client was injured in a parasailing accident due to the resort’s negligence.

View More Case Results

Here Are Some of the Hotel Chains We Can Help You With

What You Should do if You’ve Been Injured or Assaulted at a Hotel or Resort In Miami, in the US, or Internationally

If you’ve been the victim of an accident at a hotel or resort, you need to know the proper steps to take to protect your health, safety, and rights.

First and foremost, it is essential to get medical care for your injury. Even if you think it is not severe, you may have suffered hidden or long-lasting damage that only a medical professional can identify. If you want to file a lawsuit due to negligence on the part of the hotel or resort, you will need to be able to prove the extent and cause of your injuries with contemporaneous medical records.

Second, you should document the conditions at the location where you suffered your injury and try to get the contact information of any witnesses to the incident. These can be helpful later. You should also make a formal report of your injury to the hotel manager or security and ask for a copy. This proves that you suffered an injury at the hotel and made the hotel aware of it. Try to make a note of any security cameras that may have caught your accident.

Finally, if you have suffered a hotel or resort accident, you should contact an experienced and knowledgeable attorney to discuss the incident and explore your legal options. The attorneys of Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, P.A. are highly experienced and award-winning.

Call them today at 877-233-1238 or use the contact form on the website for a free consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Hotel & Resort Accidents