When a Vacation Ends at the Twenty-Ninth Floor
You are reading this because someone you love went to Hong Kong for a trip and did not come home. Maybe you are the husband or wife of the American woman who fell from the 29th-floor pool deck of Hotel Indigo Hong Kong on Queen’s Road East in Wan Chai on the morning of May 4. Maybe you are one of the seven pedestrians on the sidewalk below — the woman who was struck as she walked, or one of the six people injured when the falling woman’s impact shattered the glass entrance panels and sprayed fragments into the lobby. Maybe you are a parent, a sibling, or a grown child who got the call no one is ever ready to receive, and you are sitting at a kitchen table right now wondering what the law in a country you have never been to actually does for a person who dies on a hotel’s pool deck.
We built this page for you. Every word below is the same analysis we would walk you through in a first meeting — the same questions we would ask, the same fights we would plan, the same traps we would lay for the people who want to make this go away quietly. Take your time. Read what matters to you first. Then call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 for a free consultation, because the clock on the evidence and on your legal rights is already running.
This case has three features that make it more winnable than a stranger might tell you. First, the property is owned and operated by a global brand — InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) — whose American parent, balance sheet, and franchising structure put real money within reach of an American court. Second, the catastrophic failures here — a body falling from the 29th floor, glass panels at street level that could not withstand the impact — are exactly the kind of foreseeable, preventable dangers that Hong Kong’s premises-safety law and the building code were written to prevent. Third, when a hotel keeps a pool open 29 stories above a busy pedestrian sidewalk, the engineering and safety questions that matter are not subtle. They live in inspection records, in railing specifications, in glass-panel installation tolerances, and in IHG’s own corporate safety standards. Those documents exist. We need to find them now.
Why This Case Demands Immediate Action From the American Side
International hotel deaths are built to favor the hotel. The hotel’s lawyers are on the ground. The local police have already taken statements. The hotel’s insurance carrier has already retained investigators. The hotel has the building, the cameras, the maintenance logs, the inspection certificates, and the architectural plans. The hotel’s defense team is in motion today.
You are not. You are grieving. You are reading news reports in English from a country you may have visited once. You may not even have the death certificate yet.
That asymmetry is exactly why U.S.-based legal action matters. The Hong Kong legal system will adjudicate the local questions — duty of care, causation, local building-code compliance, comparative fault. But it cannot reach IHG’s global balance sheet in any meaningful way, and the carrier handling the property’s insurance is structured to make a full, fair recovery extraordinarily difficult. An American court, or an American-driven settlement negotiation, can do both — but only if a U.S. attorney gets moving now.
The two things racing against you are evidence and time. Hotel surveillance footage, point-of-sale records showing the victim’s room status and any pool-deck key-card access, incident reports, maintenance logs, railing inspection certificates, glass-panel installation records, and the hotel’s internal communications about safety issues all sit on systems that operate on short retention cycles. Hong Kong police will hold their files, but the hotel’s own records are not preserved by law absent a formal preservation demand. If we wait six months, we will be reading about records that no longer exist.
The Three Periods of Liability: Hotel Operator, IHG Parent, and the People Who Built It
A case like this has three distinct defendant tiers, and each one has to be addressed separately. Confusing them — or missing one — is the single most common mistake in international hotel litigation.
The Hotel Operator: Hotel Indigo Hong Kong Limited
The hotel you see on Queen’s Road East is operated by a local Hong Kong entity — Hotel Indigo Hong Kong Limited — the company that holds the operating license, staffs the front desk, runs the pool deck, and answers to Hong Kong’s Hotel and Guesthouse Accommodation Authority. Under Hong Kong’s Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance (Cap. 314), this entity is the occupier of the premises and owes the legal duty of care to every lawful visitor — including hotel guests and, with respect to the entrance and adjacent public-facing areas, the pedestrians walking on the sidewalk below.
The operator is the primary defendant in any Hong Kong action. It holds the building, the maintenance contracts, the pool-deck safety inspections, and the immediate records of everything that happened on May 4. This is also the entity whose insurance is sitting between you and a recovery.
IHG: The Parent With the Money
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC is one of the world’s largest hotel companies. IHG owns and operates more than 6,000 hotels across 13 brands, including Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Kimpton, and others. Its American-listed parent, InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (NYSE/LSE: IHG), has a balance sheet measured in the tens of billions of dollars.
In an international hotel death, IHG sits in one of three legal postures, and the case strategy depends on which one applies at this specific property:
- Corporate ownership / managed property: IHG owns the building outright or runs it through a wholly-owned subsidiary, in which case IHG is directly liable for operational decisions and corporate safety standards. This is the strongest scenario for the plaintiff.
- Franchised property: A local Hong Kong owner holds the real estate and pays IHG a franchise fee and royalties to use the Hotel Indigo brand, while IHG sets brand standards covering everything from signage to safety protocols. Here, the hotel operator is the named defendant but IHG sits behind it through the franchise agreement, the brand standards manual, and the franchisor’s reserve account and global insurance tower.
- Joint venture or management agreement: IHG may hold a minority equity position while a Hong Kong partner owns the building, with IHG providing management services and operational oversight. This blurs the lines on direct liability.
We do not know which structure applies at this Wan Chai property without pulling the corporate filings. But the legal architecture for each is well-developed, and the path to IHG’s dollars exists in every scenario.
The People Who Actually Built and Designed the Death
When a 29th-floor pool deck railing fails, or when glass panels at street level cannot withstand the impact of a falling object or body, the failure is almost never a single, sudden event. It is the end of a long chain of decisions: the railing height and material specified on the architectural drawings, the contractor who installed it, the maintenance program that was supposed to inspect it, the architect and structural engineer of record, the glass-panel supplier and installer, and the IHG corporate safety standards that governed what “safe enough” looked like.
Each of those actors is a potential defendant. Each holds documents. Each has insurance. The investigation must pursue all of them in parallel, because the litigation strategy often turns on which one of them admits what.
What Hong Kong’s Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance Actually Requires
Hong Kong operates under a common-law system that descends from English law. The Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance (Cap. 314) codifies the duty an occupier of premises owes to lawful visitors — and a hotel pool deck with glass panels opening onto a public sidewalk is exactly the setting that ordinance was written to address.
Under Hong Kong’s Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance (Cap. 314), an occupier of premises owes a common duty of care to all lawful visitors to take such care as in all the circumstances is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe in using the premises for the permitted purpose. The Building Management Ordinance (Cap. 344) and the international building codes applicable to high-rise glass structures also govern the standard of care owed by the property owner and operator.
That duty has three operational consequences your family needs to understand:
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It is non-delegable. The hotel cannot escape it by pointing at a contractor, an architect, or a maintenance vendor. The occupier — the entity that runs the property for the benefit of its guests — is on the hook for the safety of the premises regardless of who actually performed the work that made it unsafe.
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It extends beyond the registered guest. Pedestrians on the public sidewalk below a 29th-floor pool deck are lawful users of the adjacent public space. When the hotel’s architectural choices create a foreseeable hazard to those pedestrians — as a 29th-floor open deck above a glass-fronted entrance plainly does — the duty runs to them too.
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It is judged against what was foreseeable, not just what happened. The legal question is not only why the railing failed or the glass shattered on May 4. The legal question also includes whether a reasonable hotel operator, knowing it was running a pool deck 29 stories above a busy sidewalk, should have engineered the railing and the glass to a standard that could survive foreseeable events — including the possibility, however unlikely, that a person or object might fall or be thrown from the deck.
Hong Kong’s building and construction codes, including those governing glass curtain walls and barriers on elevated structures, set minimum specifications. Where the hotel’s actual installation fell short of those specifications, or where the maintenance program allowed degradation below code, the legal exposure is direct.
How We Bring the Case to the United States
The defendant you can reach most fully is IHG — a global company with substantial operations, treasury functions, and insurance coverage in the United States. The question is how to make an American court hear a claim that arises from a death in Hong Kong.
There are several doctrinal doors, and the right one depends on where the decedent was from, where the family lives, and where IHG is most vulnerable to service and enforcement. Ralph Manginello and the team at Attorney911 will evaluate which forum gives your family the strongest platform.
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Where IHG is headquartered for U.S. operations: IHG maintains substantial corporate presence in the United States. Service of process, discovery, and judgment enforcement are all practical.
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Where the decedent was domiciled: If the American tourist was domiciled in Texas, California, Florida, New York, or another U.S. state at the time of death, that state’s wrongful-death and survival statutes typically govern the substantive recovery. Each state’s statute has its own beneficiaries, its own recoverable damages, and its own statute of limitations.
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Where the family lives: Most U.S. jurisdictions allow a wrongful-death action to be filed in the state where the beneficiaries reside.
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Forum non conveniens: IHG will ask any U.S. court to dismiss in favor of the Hong Kong courts. This is the single biggest defense move we will fight. We defeat it by showing that the U.S. forum has stronger interests — the decedent’s domicile, the family’s residence, the location of IHG’s corporate parent, the location of the insurance tower, the availability of U.S. discovery tools, and the comparative fairness of each forum.
The forum non conveniens fight is not abstract. It is the hinge on which the case survives in the United States or dies there. We have seen corporate defendants succeed in kicking cases back to foreign courts where the foreign system offers a slower track, smaller recoveries, weaker discovery, or unfamiliar procedural protections. We have also seen those motions denied when the plaintiff’s U.S. connection is strong. Your case must be built from day one to win that motion.
What an American Recovery Actually Looks Like
If your family proceeds in the United States — or in Hong Kong with U.S.-driven settlement leverage — the damages calculation is the single largest variable in your case. American wrongful-death recoveries are governed by state statute, but they share a common architecture.
Economic damages include the victim’s lost future earnings calculated year by year through her projected work life, adjusted for raises, benefits, and the present-value discount rate an economist will defend. For an American professional or wage-earner, this number routinely reaches seven figures. Lost household services — the cooking, childcare, repairs, and management the victim performed at home — are also recoverable at the market rate to replace them. Funeral and burial expenses are direct out-of-pocket. Pre-death medical expenses, if any, are recoverable. Loss of financial support to dependents is calculated separately from general earnings loss.
Non-economic damages include the family’s loss of companionship, guidance, affection, and consortium — the human things that no paycheck measures. In many U.S. jurisdictions, the decedent’s own pre-death pain and suffering is recoverable in a survival action, even in a death case, when the victim survived the fall long enough to experience conscious injury or fear. This can be substantial and is often the most contested line item.
Punitive damages are recoverable in many U.S. jurisdictions when the defendant’s conduct shows conscious indifference to known danger. An international hotel chain that has operated elevated pool decks above public-facing glass for years without engineering the barriers and glazing to a foreseeable-impact standard is a candidate for a punitive exposure — and the existence of IHG’s own corporate safety standards is exactly the kind of internal record that drives that argument.
The case value range Attorney911’s analysis framework places this type of claim is between $750,000 and $6,500,000, with the upper end reserved for cases involving clear corporate disregard for known safety failures, large economic losses, and significant non-economic harm. The actual value of your case depends on facts we will spend the first weeks uncovering. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Seven Pedestrians: Their Claims Are Yours, Too
The seven pedestrians injured on the morning of May 4 are not anonymous bystanders in your case — they are corroborating witnesses, and in some cases co-claimants. The woman who was struck as she walked has her own claim against the hotel for her injuries; so do the six people injured by the shattered glass. Their injuries, medical records, witness statements, and HK Police reports are part of the same evidentiary record your family needs.
In international litigation, the relationship between a wrongful-death family and the surviving injured victims is delicate but strategically important. Their physical injuries are proof of the force of what fell from the 29th floor — corroborating the engineering theory of the case. Their statements, taken by Hong Kong police in the hours after the incident, lock in the physical facts before memories fade. Their medical records document the catastrophic nature of a 29-story fall.
A competent international case will coordinate carefully with the injured pedestrians — not to compete with them but to share evidence and, where appropriate, pursue parallel claims that strengthen everyone’s position.
Evidence Preservation: What Exists, Who Holds It, How Fast It Disappears
This is the single most important operational section of this page. The evidence that proves your case is finite, and the people who hold it are not waiting for you.
Hotel Records — Hours to Weeks
Hotel Indigo Hong Kong’s CCTV footage of the pool deck, the elevators leading to the upper floors, the lobby, and the entrance — including the moment of impact on May 4 — is the single most perishable piece of evidence. Hotel CCTV systems operate on rolling retention cycles measured in days to weeks, not months. The Hong Kong Police will have already requested preservation of footage relevant to the criminal investigation, but the hotel’s broader CCTV buffer is not preserved absent a formal demand from civil counsel.
Front-desk and reservation records showing the victim’s check-in, room assignment, key-card access, and any pool-deck entry swipes (many hotel pools require key-card access) live on the hotel’s property management system. Retention varies but is rarely more than a few years for guest records.
Incident reports generated by hotel staff on the morning of May 4 — the duty manager’s log, the security officer’s report, the engineering response — were created contemporaneously and are the most valuable contemporaneous documents your case will ever see.
HK Police Investigation
The Hong Kong Police Wan Chai Division conducted the initial investigation. Their case file will include witness statements from staff and the seven injured pedestrians, the on-scene officers’ notes, the medical examiner’s preliminary findings, photographs of the scene, and the police source statements that have appeared in Hong Kong media. Police files in Hong Kong are not automatically released to private litigants but can be obtained through the discovery process once a civil action is filed.
Building and Architectural Records
The architectural and engineering plans for the hotel — including the pool-deck railing specifications, the glass-panel installation drawings, the wind-load and impact-load calculations for the entrance glazing, and any modifications made after original construction — are held by the architect of record, the structural engineer of record, and the hotel itself. These documents are typically preserved indefinitely but can be difficult to obtain without a formal preservation demand and, in the United States, a subpoena.
The glass manufacturer and installer hold product specifications, installation records, and any internal testing data on the impact resistance of the specific glass panels installed at the Hotel Indigo entrance.
The pool-deck railing manufacturer and installer hold the same set of documents for the railing that failed.
IHG Corporate Safety Records
IHG’s Global Safety and Security Standards — the corporate protocols the chain applies to every property, including specifications for elevated pool decks, railing requirements, glass-panel standards at street level, and incident-response protocols — are held at IHG’s corporate headquarters. These documents are the smoking gun when an IHG property fails to meet them: they show what the company itself knew was safe, and what this property fell short of.
IHG’s incident-response communications from May 4 — internal emails, calls to the regional office, the chain’s response to the publicity — are also corporate records subject to discovery. These documents show what IHG knew, when it knew it, and what it did about it.
Medical and Death Investigation Records
The medical examiner’s report on the American tourist will establish the cause of death — the fall from the 29th floor — and document any injuries sustained in the impact. In Hong Kong, the Coroner’s Court conducts an inquest into deaths occurring in unusual circumstances, and the resulting findings are part of the public record. The hospital records of the injured pedestrians are obtained through Hong Kong’s discovery process or, where the pedestrian is a U.S. resident, through U.S. subpoenas.
The Preservation Letter
Within days of being retained, Attorney911 will issue preservation letters to the hotel operator, to IHG’s U.S. and global offices, to the architect of record, to the glass manufacturer and installer, to the railing manufacturer and installer, and to any other identified defendant. These letters demand the preservation of every category of document described above and create the legal foundation for a spoliation argument if any of those records are later found to have been destroyed.
The Hong Kong Inquest and the U.S. Civil Case: How They Work Together
A death like this in Hong Kong will almost certainly proceed to a Coroner’s Inquest before a Hong Kong magistrate. The inquest’s purpose is to determine the facts of the death — how, when, and where the victim died — and to make recommendations to prevent similar deaths. It is not a damages action; it cannot award compensation. But it is enormously important to your civil case because:
- It locks in contemporaneous testimony from hotel staff, the injured pedestrians, and IHG personnel under oath.
- It produces an official record of the engineering and safety failures that caused the death.
- It establishes the Hong Kong government’s official findings on building-code compliance and premises-safety violations.
- It can be used in any subsequent civil proceeding as evidence of the facts found.
We coordinate the inquest strategy with the civil case strategy from day one. Statements made by hotel staff or IHG personnel at the inquest can be devastating in a U.S. civil trial if they later try to deny what they admitted under oath.
The Statute of Limitations Is Already Running
Two clocks are running on your case right now, and they may be running in different directions.
Hong Kong
Under Hong Kong’s Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347), personal-injury and fatal-accident claims must generally be brought within three years from the date the cause of action accrued. For a wrongful-death claim arising from May 4, the three-year window closes on or about May 4, 2028. Three years sounds comfortable, but the time needed to investigate, retain Hong Kong counsel, obtain the inquest record, negotiate with carriers, and file suit is substantial. We recommend beginning the formal Hong Kong filing well before the deadline.
The United States
U.S. wrongful-death statutes of limitations vary by state. Many states allow two years from the date of death; some allow three; a few have shorter or longer windows depending on the beneficiary and the theory. If your family is domiciled in a U.S. state, the state’s statute typically governs the U.S. action — even when the death occurred abroad.
The critical point is that the U.S. clock is often shorter than the Hong Kong clock, and it can run from the date of death without the discovery rule that sometimes tolls other kinds of claims. Two years goes fast when you are also grieving, navigating foreign procedures, and trying to make sense of news reports.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 today for a free consultation. We will identify the controlling statute for your family, calculate the exact deadline, and lay out the sequence of filings that protects all of your rights in every forum.
How the Insurance Carrier Will Try to Defeat Your Claim
International hotel death claims are defended by some of the most sophisticated insurance teams in the world. Lupe Peña spent years inside that world as an insurance-defense attorney before joining Attorney911 to fight for injured people. He knows exactly how these carriers think because he used to think the same way. Here is the playbook we expect, and the counter to each play.
Play One: “This Was Suicide”
The carrier’s first move will be to characterize the fall as a voluntary act — a suicide — to shift the case out of premises liability and into a much narrower framework that excludes most wrongful-death damages.
The counter: A psychological autopsy, combined with the structural and CCTV evidence from the pool deck, almost always defeats this framing. The height of the railing, the configuration of the deck, the presence or absence of warning signs, the victim’s history, the angle and trajectory of the fall, and the absence of any prior indication of suicidal ideation are all facts we will develop aggressively. A suicide framing requires affirmative proof, not just speculation. And in many U.S. wrongful-death statutes, even a death classified as suicide is compensable when the premises created an unreasonable risk of harm.
Play Two: “Sue in Hong Kong”
The carrier will argue that any case belongs in Hong Kong, where recoveries are smaller, discovery is more limited, and the carrier’s local counsel have the home-court advantage. This is the forum non conveniens defense in the U.S. action, and the parallel argument in any pre-filing negotiation.
The counter: The U.S. has stronger interests in adjudicating the death of its citizen than Hong Kong has in adjudicating the safety practices of a foreign-owned hotel chain. The decedent’s domicile, the family’s residence, IHG’s U.S. presence, the location of the insurance tower, and the comparative procedural protections all favor the U.S. forum. We build that record from day one so the motion to dismiss fails.
Play Three: “The Local Operator Did It, Not IHG”
The carrier will try to draw a bright line between the local operator and IHG, arguing that IHG is just a brand licensor with no operational involvement in the Wan Chai property.
The counter: IHG’s Global Safety and Security Standards are the franchisor’s own playbook for every property in the system. When those standards address pool-deck railing specifications, glass-panel impact ratings, or incident-response protocols, IHG has prescribed what safe looks like. A property that falls short of those standards is failing IHG’s own rules — and IHG is on notice of that failure through its franchise oversight, brand-standard audits, and incident-reporting requirements. The corporate veil between franchisor and franchisee is far thinner than the carrier will admit.
Play Four: “Comparative Fault”
In Hong Kong and in many U.S. states, the carrier will argue that the victim was at fault — leaning over the railing, sitting on it, standing on a chair, failing to notice an obvious danger.
The counter: Hong Kong’s Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance and most U.S. premises-liability statutes limit comparative fault defenses against invitees and pay particular attention to whether the alleged fault is a complete defense or only a partial reduction. A 29th-floor pool deck with glass panels at street level is exactly the setting where the law is least tolerant of “the victim should have known better” arguments. Engineering the deck to a standard that survives foreseeable events is the hotel’s job, not the guest’s.
Play Five: “Architectural Defect, Not Our Fault”
The carrier will point at the architect, the contractor, the glass installer, the railing manufacturer — anyone other than the hotel and IHG.
The counter: The hotel’s duty under Hong Kong law is non-delegable. IHG’s corporate safety standards govern what the property was required to build. The architect and the contractor are additional defendants, not substitutes for the hotel and the brand. Every additional defendant is another pocket of insurance, another set of documents, and another witness who can be deposed — and another reason the case cannot be made to go away.
The Architectural Failure That Has to Be Investigated
A body falling from a 29th-floor pool deck and a glass entrance that shatters under the impact are not isolated events. They are the predictable consequences of a building whose safety engineering was inadequate for the foreseeable consequences of operating a pool deck that high above a public sidewalk.
The investigation will pursue several lines of inquiry in parallel. The pool-deck railing must be examined — its height, its material, its anchoring, its load rating, its compliance with Hong Kong building codes for barriers on elevated structures, and any history of repairs, modifications, or complaints. The glass panels at the entrance must be examined for their impact rating, their thickness, their tempering, their laminating, their framing, their anchoring to the building structure, and their compliance with the glass standards applicable to high-rise curtain walls and pedestrian-facing glazing in Hong Kong.
The wind loading and impact loading calculations that governed the original design must be obtained and reviewed by an independent structural engineer. The maintenance and inspection records for both the railing and the glass must be pulled and reviewed for evidence of known degradation that was not addressed.
The IHG corporate standards governing both railing and glass at elevated pool decks must be obtained and compared to the actual installation. If IHG’s own standards required a higher specification than what was installed at Hotel Indigo Hong Kong, that is direct evidence of corporate knowledge of the deficiency.
This is the kind of investigation that requires independent engineering experts — structural engineers who specialize in glass curtain-wall failures, railing engineers who can testify to the relevant code requirements, and building-code experts who can speak to Hong Kong and international standards with equal fluency. We retain those experts early, because their preliminary findings drive the litigation strategy.
Case Value: What This Kind of Case Can Be Worth
The case value range Attorney911’s analysis places this category of claim is between $750,000 and $6,500,000. The lower end reflects cases with limited economic loss, comparative-fault reductions, and quick settlement at the local-operator level. The upper end reflects cases involving clear corporate disregard for known safety failures, large economic losses, severe non-economic harm, and successful reach into the U.S. parent corporation’s insurance tower.
The factors that push a Hotel Indigo case toward the upper end are concrete and identifiable:
- The catastrophic nature of a 29-story fall. No reasonable jury or magistrate looks at this and calls it a minor case.
- Seven injured pedestrians. The corroborating evidence of force and foreseeability is in the room from minute one.
- Glass panels that could not withstand the impact. This is an engineering failure, and engineering failures have documents and witnesses.
- IHG’s corporate safety standards. A defendant that has written down what safe looks like cannot credibly claim it didn’t know.
- A global brand with U.S. operations. The reach into IHG’s insurance tower is what makes the upper end of the range achievable.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. No attorney can promise a specific number. What we can promise is the investigation, the experts, the negotiation, and the trial work that puts the highest possible number on the table.
Why Attorney911 for an International Hotel Death Case
You need a firm that can hold two courts in two countries at the same time, work with Hong Kong local counsel without losing control of the U.S. action, retain the engineering experts who can prove the railing and glass failures, and negotiate against an international insurance tower staffed by defense lawyers who do nothing but defeat cases like yours.
Ralph Manginello leads our trial team. Ralph has spent more than 27 years in courtrooms across the country, including federal court. Before he was a lawyer he was a journalist — which is exactly why he knows how to find the documents the other side wants buried, and how to tell the story of what those documents prove. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas and to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the Million Dollar Trial Lawyers Association.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney with the perspective your case needs from the other side of the table. Before he joined us, Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue cases exactly like yours. He knows the playbook Lupe used to run, because he wrote it. Now he uses that knowledge for the people who were on the other side. He is fluent in Spanish — hablamos Español — and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Attorney911 has been fighting for injured people since July 18, 2001. We work on contingency: 33.33% before trial, 40% if trial is necessary. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. Your first call is free, it is confidential, and it goes to a live member of our team — not an answering service.
For international cases we routinely work with local counsel in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere — and we coordinate that local work so the U.S. action and the foreign action reinforce each other rather than stepping on each other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a U.S. family sue a Hong Kong hotel for a tourist’s death?
Yes, but the path depends on who died, where the family lives, and which defendants you reach. The hotel operator is sued in Hong Kong under the Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance. The U.S. parent corporation is sued in the United States under your home state’s wrongful-death statute. We pursue both forums simultaneously, using each to support the other.
What is the Hong Kong Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance?
It is Cap. 314 of the Laws of Hong Kong. It codifies the common-law duty an occupier of premises owes to lawful visitors — to take such care as is reasonable to see that the visitor will be reasonably safe on the premises. For a hotel, the duty is non-delegable and applies to guests and, with respect to public-facing areas, to pedestrians on the adjacent sidewalk.
Who pays when a tourist dies at an international hotel?
The hotel operator’s liability insurance pays first. Above that, the franchisor’s (IHG’s) corporate insurance and reserve funds are reachable. The architect, contractor, glass manufacturer, and railing manufacturer each carry their own professional and product liability coverage. We pursue every pocket.
What compensation is available for the seven injured pedestrians?
The seven injured pedestrians have their own Hong Kong personal-injury claims against the hotel operator, separate from your wrongful-death case. Their claims cover medical expenses, lost income, pain and suffering, and any permanent disability. Their injuries are also evidence for your case of how catastrophic a 29-story fall is. We can refer them to Hong Kong personal-injury counsel while we focus on your wrongful-death action.
How long does a family have to file a wrongful death claim?
In Hong Kong, the Limitation Ordinance (Cap. 347) generally gives three years from the date of death. In most U.S. states, the statute is two years from the date of death — shorter than Hong Kong’s. The U.S. clock can run from the date of death without a discovery rule. Call us immediately so we identify your state’s controlling statute and protect every right.
What evidence must be preserved at a Hong Kong crash site?
Hotel CCTV footage (hours to weeks), reservation and key-card records, incident reports, architectural and engineering plans, pool-deck railing specifications, glass-panel installation records, the hotel’s maintenance and inspection logs, the HK Police investigation file, the medical examiner’s report, and the inquest record. We send preservation letters within days of being retained.
Can we sue InterContinental Hotels Group in U.S. courts?
Yes. IHG is a global company with substantial U.S. operations. We file in the U.S. forum that has the strongest interest — typically the decedent’s domicile, the family’s residence, or IHG’s U.S. corporate presence. The defendant will move to dismiss for forum non conveniens. We defeat that motion by building the record from day one.
How does Hong Kong wrongful death law differ from U.S. wrongful death law?
Hong Kong’s fatal-accidents framework is more limited than the typical U.S. statute. U.S. wrongful-death statutes typically allow recovery for full economic loss, loss of household services, loss of companionship and consortium, and (in many states) punitive damages. Hong Kong’s framework is narrower. The strategic consequence is that reaching IHG in the United States often produces a substantially larger recovery than suing only in Hong Kong — which is why the dual-track approach is so important.
What if the hotel claims the tourist jumped or committed suicide?
A suicide framing requires affirmative proof from the hotel, not just speculation. The structural evidence of the pool deck, the CCTV footage, the victim’s history, and the testimony of witnesses and family all work against a suicide narrative. And in many U.S. wrongful-death statutes, even a death that involved the victim’s own conduct is compensable when the premises created an unreasonable risk of harm.
How do families navigate two legal systems at once?
You don’t have to do it alone. Attorney911 coordinates with Hong Kong local counsel for the inquest and any Hong Kong civil filing, while running the U.S. action in parallel. We keep one case file, one strategy, and one voice for the family. You should not be answering the same questions for two different lawyers in two different countries.
Does the hotel’s “safety” signage change the analysis?
No. Warning signs do not relieve the occupier of the duty to make the premises reasonably safe. A sign saying “do not lean over railing” or “do not sit on glass” does not authorize the hotel to install a substandard railing or a non-impact-rated glass panel. Hong Kong’s Occupiers’ Liability Ordinance and the building code govern the underlying safety, not the sign.
How long does an international wrongful-death case take?
Every case is different. A case that settles early — particularly one where IHG’s insurance carrier recognizes the exposure and negotiates reasonably — can resolve in 12 to 24 months. A case that goes to trial in the United States can take two to four years from filing. The Hong Kong inquest adds its own timeline. Our job is to keep pressure on every front simultaneously so the case resolves at the highest possible value as quickly as the facts allow.
The Records That Will Move Today
If you have read this far, you are already closer to the answers than most families ever get. The next step is the call.
We will pull the Hotel Indigo Hong Kong operating-entity records and identify the controlling HK company. We will pull IHG’s corporate structure and identify the U.S. parent and its U.S. presence. We will identify the architect of record and the structural engineer of record for the Wan Chai property and obtain their professional liability coverage. We will pull the HK Police investigation file through the proper Hong Kong channels. We will obtain the Coroner’s Inquest record. We will retain a Hong Kong structural engineer who specializes in glass curtain-wall failures and a railing engineer who can speak to the Hong Kong code. We will issue preservation letters to every identified defendant. We will file the U.S. action in the proper forum and move it forward on the U.S. clock.
And we will keep you informed at every step, in plain English (or en Español — hablamos Español), with one lawyer in charge and one case strategy that pulls every forum in the same direction.
Call us now at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, the call is confidential, and the evidence clock has already started. We don’t get paid unless we win. We have spent more than two decades standing between families like yours and the people who want to make this go away quietly.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Learn more about our international tort practice and the kinds of catastrophic-injury cases we handle. See how our catastrophic-injury team approaches wrongful-death claims. Meet Ralph Manginello, the trial attorney who would lead your case. Meet Lupe Peña, the attorney who spent years on the insurance side and now fights for the people on yours.