When a Motel Profits from Trafficking: Holding Budget Hotels Accountable in Mount Laurel and Maple Shade
You may be reading this at 2 a.m., or you may be reading it because a daughter, a sister, a friend, or a child you tried to protect did not come home the way she left. The details vary. What does not vary is what you have just learned: a hotel — a business with cameras, night audits, key-card records, a general manager on duty, and a corporate parent collecting franchise royalties — was the place where a 17-year-old was sold to men, day after day, for more than a year. And the same hotel kept handing over the keys.
We write this for you. Not for the brand. Not for the industry. For the survivor, and for every family member who has been told by one lawyer after another that “there’s nothing to sue” because the trafficker is dead, the pimp is in prison, or the victim used drugs. There is something. Federal civil law gives a trafficking survivor the right to sue any business that knowingly benefited from the venture. And the record in Burlington County has finally started to use it.
The case in front of us right now is a New Jersey federal lawsuit filed by a Jane Doe who was 17 and homeless when she was trafficked by Stanton Krogulski from May 2014 to August 2015. He operated from a Red Roof Inn in Mount Laurel and a Motel 6 in Maple Shade, both in Burlington County along the Route 73 and I-295 corridor. The lawsuit names Red Roof Inns, Inc. and G6 Hospitality LLC (the parent of Motel 6) and accuses them of taking money from a venture they knew, or should have known, was trafficking a minor. The case sits in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. It is not the first case like this. The first TVPRA civil jury verdict in the country — $40 million, $10 million compensatory and $30 million punitive against a budget motel owner — was returned in Atlanta in July 2025 against the same kind of defendant, for the same kind of conduct. The line that case drew is the line we work from.
This page is built to do three things. First, to put the federal law in your hands in plain English so you can see whether the door is open. Second, to walk you through the proof that wins or loses a hotel trafficking case, and how fast that proof disappears if you wait. Third, to show you how our firm works these cases on contingency — no fee unless we win — and what the first seventy-two hours after you call us look like.
If you are not sure whether you have a case, call us anyway. The call is free. The consultation is private. The first move we make is to send a preservation letter that freezes the hotel’s records, before anyone in the corporate office has time to hit “delete.”
The Four Questions Every Survivor or Family Member Asks First
These are the questions we hear in the first phone call, in the order people ask them. The answers below are the answers that decide whether the door is open.
1. Can a hotel actually be sued for what a trafficker did on its property?
Yes. Under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a victim can sue any business that “knowingly benefits” from “participation in a venture” that violated the trafficking law. Hotels and motels are the most common defendants in these cases for one reason: the trafficker has to put his victims somewhere, and the motel that hands over the key and takes the cash is part of the operation. In the New Jersey case, Jane Doe alleges the staff at the Mount Laurel Red Roof Inn and the Maple Shade Motel 6 saw the same trafficker check in over and over, paid cash, refused housekeeping, brought different young women, and turned a blind eye. We do not need to prove the motel management personally trafficked anyone. We need to prove they took the money while they knew, or should have known. The same statute that punishes the pimp punishes the motel that profits from the pimp.
2. The trafficker is dead. Can I still sue?
Yes. Krogulski was fatally shot in Philadelphia in August 2023. His estate is technically still a defendant in many of these cases, but you are not waiting for his estate to pay a judgment. The whole point of the federal civil remedy is that it reaches the businesses that profited while he was alive. His death does not end the case against the hotels. It actually focuses the case on the only defendants with money to pay. There is also a separate, smaller practical reality: when a trafficker dies before trial, the survivor can no longer be cross-examined about her relationship with him in a way that implies she was a willing participant. That alone changes the texture of the case.
3. How long do I have to file?
Two clocks run in parallel. The federal TVPRA clock gives you ten years from the date the cause of action arose, and ten years after the victim turns 18 if the victim was a minor at the time. For Jane Doe, the federal SOL is favorable. New Jersey’s own statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse was extended by reforms in 2019, and New Jersey follows a discovery rule for latent injuries, so the state-law clock is also favorable. We will not let a deadline steal a case we can win. The federal deadline is the most important: if you were trafficked as a child, the ten years runs from your eighteenth birthday. You can read more about how contingency fees work in cases like these — we do not get paid unless we win, so we move on cases we believe in even when the clock looks long.
4. I used drugs. I didn’t fight back. Does that disqualify me?
No. The law does not punish a survivor for the way she survived. The federal statute does not require you to have resisted. New Jersey’s comparative-negligence rule (modified 51% bar) is not a weapon against a trafficking victim in this kind of case — the conduct of the defendant is the focus, not the choices a coerced teenager made under threat of death. If you want to understand how PTSD shapes memory and behavior after this kind of trauma, our PTSD payout guide explains the same neuroscience that applies here. What you remember, what you cannot remember, and why you stayed are not proof against you. They are proof of what was done to you.
The Defendants in a Mount Laurel / Maple Shade Case — The Shell Game
A budget hotel is rarely one company. The name on the sign is rarely the only defendant, and it is rarely the only one that owes money. The case is built by walking up the stack.
The property-level operator. Every Red Roof Inn and every Motel 6 in New Jersey is owned by a local limited liability company and managed by a regional management company. That LLC is the entity whose name should appear on the franchise agreement, the deed, the certificate of occupancy, and the state business registration. The operator is the company that ran the front desk, set the rates, and decided what to do about the cash-paying guest who refused housekeeping. This is the defendant we name first. This is the entity whose insurance pays first.
The brand on the sign. Red Roof Inns, Inc. is the franchisor. G6 Hospitality LLC is the franchisor of Motel 6. The franchisor decides the brand standards, the training, the system, the reservation technology, the room-night audit, and the marketing. The franchisor collects a royalty off every room night. The franchisor also has the power to set the safety policies that would have prevented the trafficking if the policies had been followed. The leading case on franchisor liability in this space is Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714 (11th Cir. 2021). In that case, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of the franchisor defendants, holding that ordinary observation of trafficking plus receipt of a franchise fee is not enough to establish “participation in a venture.” Read carefully: that ruling is a barrier, not a wall. It tells us how to plead the franchisor case. A franchisor can still be liable if the survivor can show direct revenue from the trafficking rooms, brand-level control over how the property was operated, ignored red-flag patterns the franchisor’s own standards were designed to detect, and operational entanglement beyond a mere franchise relationship. We draft the franchisor complaint with those four facts in mind. The case sits in the same posture as the post-Red Roof line of district-court cases that have allowed franchisor claims past motions to dismiss. The most recent appellate development came out of the Eleventh Circuit in March 2026 in A.G. v. Northbrook Industries, Inc., where the court vacated summary judgment for a hotel operator and held that “participation in a venture” can be shown by active support or facilitation of the trafficking operation — staff interactions with traffickers, allowing unverified room access, and ignoring trafficking indicators. That ruling sharpens the standard for operator-level liability and gives us a roadmap for franchisor liability when the franchisor’s own standards were ignored at the property.
G6 Hospitality is in the middle of an ownership change. Motel 6 was owned by Blackstone Real Estate from 2012 until December 17, 2024, when Blackstone sold G6 Hospitality to Oravel Stays, the parent of OYO, for $525 million. This is not a small detail. If the trafficking occurred at the Maple Shade Motel 6 during the period in question, the corporate beneficiary of the room revenue at that time was Blackstone-controlled G6. If the case is still being litigated now, the defendant is Oravel-controlled G6. The right defendant for the right period matters. We pull the corporate history before we file.
The management company. Many budget properties are run by a third-party management company that supplies the general manager, the front-desk staff, and the training. The management company is a separate defendant and a separate coverage tower.
The owner LLC. The deed-holder — often a single-purpose LLC created for one property — can look asset-free on paper. That is by design. We name it anyway, because piercing the corporate veil to reach the parent and the brand is part of the case, not separate from it.
The shell game is the defense’s first move. Walking up the stack is ours.
The Medicine of What Was Done to Her
The injury in a trafficking case is the injury you cannot see on an X-ray. It is the central proof problem of the case, and it is also the central truth. We treat it as medicine, not as a mood.
Trauma is a medical diagnosis with formal criteria. Under the DSM-5 / DSM-5-TR, a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder requires the survivor to clear a structured checklist: the stressor itself, intrusive re-experiencing, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity, duration of more than one month, and functional impairment. The criteria are not subjective. They are a structured clinical interview, with validated instruments (the CAPS-5 and the PCL-5), and they are reproducible in a courtroom by a treating clinician. We build the medical record from the moment the survivor is in our care. We do not let the defense win the invisibility fight.
Trauma is the most PTSD-genic event that exists. The landmark National Comorbidity Survey ranked rape as the most psychologically damaging event researchers had measured for both men and women. The follow-on epidemiology is consistent: complex PTSD, major depressive disorder, substance-use disorder, traumatic brain injury from assault, sexually transmitted infection, reproductive harm, lost education, lost earning capacity. These are not soft injuries. They are diagnosable, treatable, and lifelong.
The cost of rape in the United States has been measured by federal public-health researchers. Peterson and colleagues, writing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2017, estimated the lifetime cost of rape at more than $122,000 per victim (in 2014 dollars), with a population burden across more than twenty-five million U.S. adult victims approaching $3.1 trillion. That number covers health care, lost productivity, and criminal-justice costs only. It does not capture the human losses. We use the Peterson figure as the floor of the economic damages and add the survivor’s specific life-care plan on top. The number moves every year with medical inflation. We pull the current figure at the time of trial and stamp the dollar year.
The defense’s playbook against the invisible injury is well-rehearsed. “She was using drugs.” “She didn’t fight back.” “She doesn’t remember the dates.” “Her memory is inconsistent.” Each of these is a card we have seen and a card we know how to answer. The involuntary paralysis during assault is documented in the medical literature — Möller and colleagues, writing in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica in 2017, found that roughly seventy percent of rape survivors experienced significant tonic immobility during the assault, and roughly half experienced extreme immobility, with the women who froze going on to develop PTSD at roughly two-and-three-quarter times the rate of those who did not. “She didn’t fight back” is not evidence of consent. It is evidence of the trauma. The defense is counting on the jury not knowing that. We make sure the jury knows.
You can read more about the connection between brain injury and psychological trauma in our brain injury overview. The same neuroscience that explains why a car-accident survivor cannot shake the nightmares explains why a trafficking survivor cannot shake them. The treatment plan is the same: therapy, medication when needed, and a life-care plan built by a qualified clinician who specializes in complex trauma.
The Defense Playbook and How We Answer It
We have watched the insurance industry and the budget-hotel industry litigate these cases for years. We know the playbook. We know the counters. The first conversation with the survivor includes a clear-eyed explanation of every play the other side is going to run.
Play One: “The driver of the room was an independent contractor. The hotel is not responsible for him.” The defense will say the trafficker was a guest, not an employee, and the hotel had no duty beyond ordinary hospitality. The counter is that the federal TVPRA does not require an employment relationship. It requires a venture. The motel that rents the same room to the same cash-paying guest for forty days, that watches different young women pass through, that ignores complaints, is part of the venture as a matter of law. The Eleventh Circuit’s March 2026 ruling in A.G. v. Northbrook Industries made this explicit: ordinary room rental is not enough, but active support or facilitation is, and staff interactions with traffickers and ignored red flags are exactly that.
Play Two: “We had no actual knowledge.” The defense will argue the motel never received a specific complaint and never saw a specific incident. The counter is constructive knowledge. The federal standard is “knew or should have known.” The indicators are well-known in the industry and taught in the brand’s own training: cash payment, refusal of housekeeping, excessive foot traffic, requests for rooms near exits, used condoms in the trash, a controlled-appearing guest, prior law-enforcement activity at the property. The defense cannot credibly argue it did not know the red flags when the brand’s own training materials teach the staff exactly what the red flags are.
Play Three: “We will settle this quietly for a small amount if the survivor agrees to a non-disclosure and a release of all future claims.” The defense will often approach a survivor before counsel is involved, offering a small payment in exchange for silence. The survivor should never sign anything without a lawyer. Once a release is signed, the federal TVPRA claim is gone. Once a non-disclosure is signed, the survivor cannot speak about what happened. We do not let our clients sign anything before we have read it. You can read more about what not to say to an insurance adjuster — the same rule applies to the brand’s risk-management team, which is a more polished version of the same adjuster.
Play Four: “The case is worth very little because the survivor was also using drugs and made other choices.” The defense will point to the survivor’s drug use, her criminal history if any, her prior instability, anything to argue she was a willing participant or that her damages are small. The counter is the medical literature on trafficking and addiction, the discovery rule on damages, and the federal standard that does not allow a defendant to benefit from the very conditions the trafficking created.
Play Five: Delay. Delay. Delay. The defense will file every motion, request every extension, and resist every deposition. The goal is to make the case expensive to litigate and to push the survivor to settle for less. The federal TVPRA’s fee-shifting provision is the answer. The motel pays our fees at the end. We can litigate as long as the case requires.
How the Fee Works
You pay nothing up front. You pay nothing while the case is in progress. If we do not win, you owe us nothing. That is the contingency promise, in plain English. We make the investment in the case — the preservation letters, the expert witnesses, the depositions, the trial — and we recover our costs and our fee from the recovery at the end.
The federal TVPRA statute allows the recovery of reasonable attorneys’ fees from the defendant. That is what makes it possible for a survivor who has been economically destroyed by her trafficking to bring the case at all. The motel pays the fees, not the survivor. You can read more about how contingency fees work in injury cases and whether personal-injury lawyers are worth it — the same economics apply here. The difference is that the federal statute guarantees the fee shift in our favor, so the contingency is even safer than in a typical tort case.
The math is straightforward. If we recover $1 million for you, our fee is a percentage agreed in advance in our written retainer. Our costs — filing fees, expert fees, deposition transcripts, travel — come out of the gross recovery before the fee is calculated. You see the math in writing. You approve every step. The first conversation about fee is the conversation that happens in the first meeting. We do not move past that conversation without your written agreement.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the federal law that lets a trafficking survivor sue a hotel?
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a), gives a victim of trafficking the right to sue not only the trafficker but also any business that “knowingly benefits, or attempts or conspires to benefit, financially or by receiving anything of value from participation in a venture which that person knew or should have known has engaged in an act in violation of this chapter.” That one sentence is the basis of every hotel trafficking case in the country. Hotels and motels are the most common defendants because the trafficker has to put the victim somewhere, and the motel that takes the money is part of the operation.
How long do I have to file a hotel trafficking lawsuit in New Jersey?
Two clocks run in parallel. The federal TVPRA clock at 18 U.S.C. § 1595(c) gives you ten years from the date the cause of action arose, and ten years after the victim turns 18 if the victim was a minor at the time. For a survivor who was trafficked as a child, the second prong alone gives her until her late twenties to file. New Jersey’s own statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse was extended by reforms in 2019, and New Jersey courts apply a discovery rule for latent injuries. Combined, the litigation window is measured in years, not months. We will not let a deadline steal a case we can win. The first call is free, and the consultation is the moment we map the clock for your specific case.
Can I still sue if the trafficker is dead?
Yes. The federal civil remedy is built precisely for the situation where the trafficker is gone. The whole point of the statute is to reach the businesses that profited from the trafficking while the trafficker was alive. The trafficker’s estate is technically a defendant, but you are not waiting for the estate to pay. The hotels, the motels, the management companies, and the franchisors are the defendants with money. The trafficker’s death also closes off a defense tactic: the survivor can no longer be cross-examined about her relationship with him in a way that suggests she was a willing participant.
Can a hotel chain like Red Roof or Motel 6 be sued, or only the local property?
Both, but they are sued differently. The local property — the operating LLC and its management company — is sued for what happened at that property. The franchisor on the sign is sued for participation in the venture under a higher bar. The Eleventh Circuit’s 2021 ruling in Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714, set the franchisor bar high: ordinary observation plus a franchise fee is not enough. But the post-Red Roof line of district-court cases and the Eleventh Circuit’s March 2026 ruling in A.G. v. Northbrook Industries, Inc. have allowed franchisor cases to proceed when the complaint shows direct revenue from the trafficking rooms, brand-imposed operational control, ignored red-flag patterns the brand’s own standards were designed to detect, and operational entanglement beyond a mere franchise relationship. We draft the franchisor complaint with those four facts in mind.
What if the motel was owned by a small local company with little money?
The shell-game argument is real, but it cuts both ways. The small local operator is the entity that staffed the desk, set the rates, and decided what to do about the cash-paying guest. That operator is the first defendant. The franchisor — the national brand — is the deep pocket. The management company that supplied the general manager and the training is a separate defendant. We sue the entire stack. Piercing the corporate veil to reach the brand and the parent is part of the case, not separate from it.
What evidence do I need to prove the case?
The case is won on the hotel’s own records: key-card and PMS logs showing the trafficker’s repeated stays, surveillance video showing the pattern, housekeeping logs showing refused service, police call-for-service history showing prior activity at the property, the franchisor’s own brand-standard manual showing what the right response looked like, and the trafficker’s archived advertisements. The survivor’s medical record — built with a trauma-informed clinician — proves the injury. The forensic exam, if any, captures physical evidence. Every one of these records is on a timer. The first thing we do is send a litigation-hold letter that freezes them.
How much is my case worth?
The honest answer is: it depends on the proof, the venue, the defendant, and the survivor’s life trajectory. The industry range for TVPRA cases against budget-hotel defendants runs from the low seven figures to the high eight figures, with punitive damages often matching or exceeding compensatory damages when the conduct supports them. The first civil TVPRA jury verdict in the country, in July 2025, was $40 million — $10 million compensatory and $30 million punitive — against a Georgia motel operator for the trafficking of a sixteen-year-old. We do not promise that outcome. We promise that we will build a case capable of supporting it.
Will the case force the motel to close?
That is not the goal, and it is not the law’s goal. The federal TVPRA is about compensating the survivor and deterring future trafficking. Most cases resolve through settlement that includes safety reforms, training requirements, and ongoing monitoring. Some cases go to verdict. Either way, the survivor’s recovery is the priority. The brand’s response to the lawsuit is the brand’s choice; we make sure the survivor is made whole.
How long does the case take?
These cases are complex. Federal procedure, multi-defendant litigation, and the volume of records mean that a case from filing to resolution typically runs eighteen months to three years. The first $40 million TVPRA verdict took about four years from filing to jury. We do not promise a timeline. We do promise that the proof is preserved and the case is built with the timeline in mind.
Can I file even if I do not remember every detail?
Yes. Memory of traumatic events is fragmented by design. The medical literature on trauma and memory is well-developed, and we work with clinicians who can explain to a jury why a survivor remembers the attacker’s voice but not the date. The law does not require perfect recall. The law requires credible testimony supported by the records and the medicine. We have built cases for survivors who could not remember their own address during the trafficking.
What if I do not live in New Jersey anymore?
You can file in the federal court where the trafficking occurred, in the federal court where you live, or in the federal court where the defendant does business. The TVPRA gives plaintiffs broad venue. For the Mount Laurel and Maple Shade case, the District of New Jersey is the natural venue because the trafficking occurred there. We will file in the venue that maximizes your recovery.
What if I was a minor and the trafficker is now dead?
The federal clock is favorable. You have ten years from your eighteenth birthday. The trafficker’s death focuses the case on the businesses that profited. New Jersey’s extended statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse is also favorable. The earlier you call, the more proof survives.
What if the hotel says it had no idea?
Constructive knowledge is enough. The federal standard is “knew or should have known.” The indicators are well-known in the industry and taught in the brand’s own training: cash payment, refusal of housekeeping, excessive foot traffic, requests for rooms near exits, used condoms in the trash, controlled-appearing guests, prior law-enforcement activity. A hotel that watched the pattern and did nothing is a hotel that knew. The brand’s own training materials are the proof.
Will my name be in the public record?
Jane Doe cases are filed under seal or pseudonym to protect the survivor. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 protects sensitive personal information. The complaint identifies the survivor as Jane Doe. The motions to unseal are fought by the survivor’s lawyers, not conceded. The survivor’s privacy is part of our representation.
How do I start?
Contact our firm at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free and private. We will tell you whether the case is real, what the proof looks like, what the realistic value is, and what the next seventy-two hours would look like if you want us to take the case. We work on contingency: no fee unless we win. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can guarantee is the process: preservation, investigation, medical documentation, demand, and trial if necessary. The case ends when you decide it ends, on terms you have agreed to, with money in the bank and a record of what happened that no longer belongs only to you.
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