When a Budget Motel Becomes a Trafficking Base: How We Hold the Property and the Brand Accountable in SeaTac
You are reading this because something happened at a Motel 6 in SeaTac, or somewhere like it. Maybe your daughter is fourteen and you cannot reach her. Maybe she came back different. Maybe a call from school led to a detective’s call to you. Maybe you have already spent weeks trying to understand how a national hotel chain, with rooms renting for under eighty dollars a night, with families checking in next door, allowed a teenager to be bought and sold in the room above the ice machine. The question is not whether what happened was wrong. The question is who is legally responsible, how you prove it, and how fast the proof will disappear if you do not move.
We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We represent survivors of sex trafficking and the families of children who were exploited. This page explains the federal civil remedy, the Washington law that backs it up, the corporate structure you are actually fighting, the evidence that is on a clock right now, and the path from what happened to a recovery that funds the rest of a survivor’s life. We have handled cases like this. We know the companies, the courts, the experts, and the defense playbook. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can promise is a free consultation, a contingent fee, and a trial team that does not stop when the first offer arrives.
What Just Happened in SeaTac: A Federal Trafficking Case Against Motel 6
A Jane Doe, trafficked as a minor at age fourteen, has filed a federal lawsuit against G6 Hospitality, the parent company of Motel 6, and against SeaTac Hotels, LLC, the franchise operator. She was trafficked at two Motel 6 properties in SeaTac, King County, Washington: one on Pacific Highway South and one on 47th Avenue South. Her case is the sixth federal lawsuit of its kind filed against Motel 6 by the Singleton Schreiber firm, and it follows earlier suits that alleged the same pattern at the same properties going back years. A third SeaTac Motel 6, on Military Road South, was named in previous cases. The same corridors, the same flags, the same allegedly red-flag behaviors.
For survivors and their families, the legal significance of a sixth federal case is not the number. It is the pattern it proves. When the same motel brand, the same franchise operator, the same neighborhood, and the same red flags produce six federal complaints alleging child sex trafficking, the defense cannot credibly say this was a one-time lapse. A jury will be told that the danger was documented, the operators were on notice, and the profit kept flowing. That is the standard the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act was written to punish.
“An individual who is a victim of a violation of this chapter may bring a civil action against the perpetrator (or whoever 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) in an appropriate district court of the United States and may recover damages and reasonable attorneys fees.”
— 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a) (the federal civil remedy for trafficking victims)
Why SeaTac: The Geography the Defense Cannot Argue Away
SeaTac, Washington, is a textbook trafficking corridor, and the federal record says so. The SeaTac area, specifically the Pacific Highway South (State Route 99) corridor, is a historically high-density zone for commercial sex trafficking because of its proximity to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and high-volume transit hubs. Local law enforcement has repeatedly identified budget lodging facilities in this exact stretch as trafficking hotspots. That means any reasonable operator in this area was on notice, and a jury can be told so. Foreseeability in a negligent-security case is established by the geography itself, before a single piece of evidence is entered.
“A child is bought. The room is rented by the trafficker. The hotel’s front desk scans an ID or takes cash. The door opens. A fourteen-year-old is taken inside. The hotel’s surveillance records who came and went. The room is rented for cash by the hour, for a night, for a week. The sheets are not changed. A string of men arrives. A frightened girl is never seen at the front desk. A hundred such details are visible to any trained eye. The industry trains staff to spot every one of them.”
Who You Are Fighting: The Corporate Structure Behind the Motel 6 Sign
The motel in question is not a single company that wrote a check for the room. It is a deliberate corporate stack, and the stack is designed to make a survivor’s case harder to win. Understanding who is in the stack, and at which layer, is the first move we make.
G6 Hospitality, LLC is the parent of Motel 6 and Studio 6. The company manages a vast network of both corporate-owned and franchised properties and has faced numerous TVPRA lawsuits nationwide, which means it has developed a documented history of what its own industry calls “red flags.” Its corporate structure attempts to shield the parent entity through franchise agreements, but federal law, specifically the “knowingly benefits” standard of the TVPRA, pierces that wall when the parent took money from a venture it knew or should have known was trafficking.
SeaTac Hotels, LLC is the franchise operator on the ground. This is the entity that actually runs the front desk, hires the desk clerks, decides whether to investigate a flagged room, and is the direct landlord of the trafficking. The franchise operator cannot hide behind the brand, and the brand cannot hide behind the franchisee. Both face direct liability.
The shell game has a third player. The property may be owned by a separate LLC, with a separate management company contracted to run it, and a third-party staffing company supplying desk clerks. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, where federal civil cases in SeaTac are filed, applies federal law to every layer of the stack. Washington state law supplies the premises-liability and damages framework underneath the federal claim. In our cases, we name every layer from the outset.
The Federal Law That Makes This a Civil Case: TVPRA, FOSTA, and § 230
The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act created a private right of action that does not require the trafficker to be convicted first, and that does not require the survivor to be the person the hotel “knew” was being exploited. The statute is written to make a corporation, including a hotel chain, liable when it knowingly benefits from a venture it knew or should have known was trafficking.
The four elements a plaintiff must plead in a § 1595(a) case against a hotel or its parent are settled by controlling federal appellate law. The defendant (1) knowingly benefited, (2) from taking part in a common undertaking or enterprise involving risk and potential profit, (3) that the undertaking violated the TVPRA as to the plaintiff, and (4) the defendant had constructive or actual knowledge. Bare receipt of franchise fees and “we did not see it” are not defenses. A jury can find constructive knowledge where the red flags were visible, consistent, and ignored.
“No action may be maintained under subsection (a) unless it is commenced not later than the later of — (1) 10 years after the cause of action arose; or (2) 10 years after the victim reaches 18 years of age, if the victim was a minor at the time of the alleged offense.”
— 18 U.S.C. § 1595(c) (the federal statute of limitations for trafficking civil claims)
The 2018 Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) stripped a key piece of immunity from online platforms that facilitate trafficking, codified at 47 U.S.C. § 230(e)(5), and added a new federal crime at 18 U.S.C. § 2421A for operating a website or platform with the intent to promote or facilitate prostitution, with aggravated penalties when the conduct contributed to sex trafficking in violation of § 1591. FOSTA is the reason classified-ad sites, booking platforms, and chat-app companies can be pulled into these cases instead of pointing to an immunity from the 1990s Communications Decency Act.
“The term ‘venture’ means any group of two or more individuals associated in fact, whether or not a legal entity.”
— 18 U.S.C. § 1591(e)(6) (defining the trafficking venture for federal civil claims)
The federal definition of “venture” is deliberately broad. A trafficking venture does not have to be a corporation. Two people working together is enough. A hotel’s “participation” can be shown through its ongoing business relationship with the trafficker, the cash it collected, the rooms it kept handing over, and the warnings its staff were trained to recognize.
The Washington Law That Backs the Federal Claim
Federal law gives a survivor the door. Washington state law determines how wide that door opens and what the survivor can recover once through it. Washington follows a pure comparative negligence model. Even if a defendant argues the survivor was partly at fault, that fault only reduces the recovery; it does not erase it. The defendant takes the victim as the defendant finds her. There is no cap on non-economic damages in Washington, which makes King County a high-value venue for catastrophic-injury and trafficking litigation. The jury can hear the full human story, not a truncated statutory number.
For a child victim of sex trafficking, the statute of limitations is a special, generous rule. Because the child is a minor, Washington law extends the deadline for bringing a personal-injury or tort claim tied to childhood sexual abuse and trafficking. The federal TVPRA clock, separately, is ten years from the act or ten years after the victim turns eighteen, whichever is later, which can extend a claim into the survivor’s late twenties. The practical effect is that a childhood trafficking case is almost never too late to file on the deadline, while the evidence on the property side may already be too late to preserve.
For negligent security, premises liability, and negligent hiring or supervision claims, Washington courts apply the rule that a property owner is liable for the foreseeable criminal acts of third parties when those acts are reasonably foreseeable. In a corridor the State Patrol and the King County Sheriff have documented for years, in a motel brand that has been sued six times for the same conduct, foreseeability is not a serious question.
What the Defense Will Argue, and How We Beat Each Play
The defense playbook in a motel-trafficking case is predictable. We prepare the counter before the insurer files the motion.
Play 1: “The driver of the room was the trafficker, not us.” This is the independent-contractor dodge. It works against respondeat superior. It does not work against a TVPRA beneficiary claim, which is what we plead. We do not need to prove Motel 6 employed the trafficker. We need to prove the motel took money from a venture it should have known was trafficking. The two are different doors. We use the one Congress opened.
Play 2: “We are a franchisor; the operator is a separate company.” This is the franchisor-wall argument. Federal courts have split on how far the wall extends. In the Eleventh Circuit, for example, Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714 (11th Cir. 2021), the court affirmed dismissal of the franchisor defendants on a § 1595 beneficiary theory, finding that mere brand licensing and royalty collection do not establish “participation in a venture.” That is a defense win on those facts, and it is correctly understood as the bar a survivor’s complaint must clear. In other cases, courts have allowed franchisor claims to survive motions to dismiss or summary judgment where the complaint alleged direct revenue from the trafficking rooms, brand-imposed operational control, centralized reservation and data systems, and ignored red-flag patterns. We know which side of the line our case falls on, and we plead the franchisor facts that put it on the survivor’s side: documented revenue, brand standards, and ignored warnings.
Play 3: “We ran background checks.” Background checks are the defense’s favorite exhibit. A background check is not the standard of care. The standard of care is the answer to “what did the front desk clerk do when the same man checked in for the seventh time with a different girl?” A background check performed when the driver was hired does not immunize a motel from liability for what the desk clerk saw and ignored during the next twenty-eight days.
Play 4: “The surveillance tape is gone.” This is where evidence preservation meets spoliation. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) allows the harshest sanctions, including a jury instruction that the missing video would have been unfavorable, only where the spoliating party acted with the intent to deprive. For negligent loss, courts are limited to measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice. Washington state law applies a similar framework. The most important single move we make in the first hours of a case is a written preservation demand to every defendant and to the corporate parent, naming the surveillance, the key-card logs, the folios, and the housekeeping records by category. If the tape rolls over after that letter, the inference we draw at trial changes dramatically.
Play 5: “We will settle this quietly and seal the number.” A sealed settlement is not a win for a survivor. It is a win for the brand’s reputation. We resist sealed settlements in trafficking cases, particularly cases involving minors, unless our client affirmatively chooses confidentiality. The public record of what happened in a SeaTac Motel 6 is itself a form of remedy.
The Evidence That Already Exists, and the Clock That Is Running
The most common reason a strong case dies is not that the law is wrong. It is that the proof is gone. We have built our trafficking practice around the evidence clock, because that is the fight a survivor’s family cannot see.
Hotel surveillance video is the single most decisive record. In most properties, CCTV is overwritten on a rolling loop, commonly within thirty days, sometimes sooner. There is no federal statute mandating retention; it is governed by brand policy, system storage, and a property manager’s habits. Once the camera writes over itself, the lobby and corridor footage that would have shown the same man checking in, the cash payments, the stream of men walking to a single room, the girl who never comes to the desk, is gone. A preservation demand sent on the day the family calls us is the single most important thing that happens in the case.
Key-card access logs and property-management-system (PMS) data are the next layer. Every time a key card is used, the timestamp and room are recorded. Every folio, reservation, and housekeeping note lives in the PMS. These records turn “they claim they did not know” into “the system shows what they knew and when.” PMS retention is governed by the chain’s policy, state recordkeeping law, and tax retention, not a federal floor. A spoliation demand must name these records specifically.
Housekeeping and maintenance logs are the dossier that documents red flags. Housekeeping notes that a room refused service for three days, a maintenance ticket for a broken lock that took a week to fix, a room change request paired with a flagged credit card: these are the things a jury recognizes from a hotel’s own paperwork.
Police call-for-service and CAD records at the address are public records we obtain through Washington’s Public Records Act. They are the independent confirmation that the danger was known beyond the property’s own walls.
The 72-hour window matters more than any other evidence deadline. The first seventy-two hours after a family contacts us are when the preservation letter goes out, the public-records requests are filed, the federal complaint is drafted, and the trafficking-and-child-protection resources are connected to the family. The longer that window stretches, the more the property can lawfully destroy. Speed is not a marketing line; it is the legal strategy.
The First Seventy-Two Hours: What We Do, and When
The first conversation is free, confidential, and twenty-four hours a day. We do not need every fact to begin. We need the survivor’s age, the property name and address, the approximate date range, and the family’s permission to act. From that first call, the legal work begins.
Within the first seventy-two hours we send written preservation demands to the corporate parent, the franchise operator, the on-site management company, and any third-party staffing company that supplied desk clerks. We demand the categories of records by name. We serve the requests under Washington’s Public Records Act for police, fire, and code-enforcement records at the address. We coordinate with federal and state law enforcement already involved in the criminal investigation without compromising the civil case. We retain the right experts, including a forensic psychologist experienced in trafficking-related trauma, a forensic economist to project lifetime damages, and a life-care planner to build the cost of lifelong treatment.
If the survivor is a minor, we move under seal where possible, we protect the record from public exposure, and we ensure the family’s safety is the first operational priority, not a sidebar.
The Damages Picture: What a Federal Trafficking Case Is Worth in King County
A civil TVPRA case in federal court in Seattle, with Washington state law supplying the damages framework, is a high-value case for three reasons.
First, Washington does not cap non-economic damages. A King County jury can award the full measure of what a child has lost: her childhood, her bodily autonomy, her ability to trust, her relationship with her family, the education she will struggle to complete, the relationships that did not survive, the years of treatment ahead.
Second, the lifetime medical and psychological cost of trafficking is enormous. The CDC has published lifetime economic cost estimates for rape and sexual assault that run well into six figures per victim when medical care, lost productivity, and criminal-justice costs are tallied. A trafficking case that spans years of exploitation produces a number that reflects a lifetime of treatment, medication, residential care when needed, and the cost of recovery from PTSD, major depression, substance use disorders, and the physical consequences of sexual violence. We do not publish a single number as a guarantee. We build the number in front of a jury with a life-care planner, a treating physician, a forensic economist, and a survivor who can speak for herself.
Third, the federal cause of action itself produces a verdict that includes the defendant’s full benefit from the venture. A jury that finds the motel knowingly benefited from the trafficking of a minor can award the full cost of the harm and, where the conduct justifies it, send a punitive message through enhanced damages. We will not promise a multiplier. We will say that punitive damages are available in TVPRA cases and that the facts of a six-times-sued property make a punitive award a real possibility for the jury.
Fourth, the case value is also a coverage value. Hotels carry commercial general liability and umbrella towers. The defense will try to point at an assault-and-battery exclusion. We respond with a coverage claim that names the corporate negligence, the negligent entrustment, and the failure to warn as separate and independent bases for recovery that fall outside the typical assault-and-battery carve-out. The insurance fight is a fight of its own, and we run it in parallel with the tort case.
How a Federal Trafficking Case Actually Proceeds in Seattle
Most TVPRA cases against hotels are filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, Seattle Division. Federal question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 supports the TVPRA claim, and supplemental jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1367 supports the state-law premises, negligent security, and negligent hiring claims. The case will likely be assigned to a Seattle-based federal district judge, with discovery conducted under the federal rules, and trial typically scheduled eighteen to thirty months after filing depending on the court’s docket.
The first round is the motion to dismiss. We expect a Rule 12(b)(6) motion arguing that the complaint fails to plead the elements of § 1595(a) or that the franchisee/operator distinction insulates the franchisor. We prepare for it from day one by drafting the complaint with the specific factual allegations courts have credited in surviving motions: continuous room rentals, cash payments, refusal of housekeeping, foot traffic patterns, a minor with no ID, visible injuries, prior law-enforcement contacts, brand standards, and the corporate parent’s specific knowledge.
The second round is discovery. The preservation letter has already gone out. The first set of document requests targets the brand’s national anti-trafficking policies, training records, the franchise agreement, brand-standard manuals, incident reports at the property, guest folios, and key-card data. Depositions of the general manager, the desk clerks on duty, the regional manager, the franchise owner’s principal, the brand’s anti-trafficking program director, and corporate officers responsible for safety programs are standard.
The third round is expert development. We retain a forensic psychologist to diagnose the survivor’s injuries under DSM-5 criteria and project treatment. We retain a forensic economist to project lost earning capacity and lifetime care costs. We retain a life-care planner to build the cost stream. We retain a corporate-structure expert to walk the jury through the franchisor/franchisee/management-company stack.
Mediation comes after the depositions of the general manager and the corporate safety director, when the defense has been forced to put its own people under oath. By that point the insurer and the corporate parent have a real number in front of them, not a number manufactured by a claims adjuster working from a software program.
Trial is the backstop. We try these cases when the defense refuses a fair number.
What the Survivor and Family Should Understand About the Process
The survivor did nothing wrong. The defense will, in discovery and sometimes in open court, try to suggest otherwise. We do not let that happen. The legal standard is the same standard we would apply to any plaintiff: take the victim as you find her, do not punish her for vulnerabilities the trafficker exploited, and judge the conduct of the adults who profited, not the conduct of the child who was bought.
The survivor’s medical and psychological records are protected. HIPAA, Washington’s stronger medical-records privacy law, and the federal trauma-informed protocols that govern forensic interviews all build a wall around the survivor’s private life. Discovery into the survivor’s history is permitted only to the extent the defense can show specific relevance, and even then it is tightly scoped by Rule 412 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which restricts evidence of a victim’s sexual behavior in civil cases.
The survivor’s privacy is paramount. The complaint in a minor’s case is filed under seal, often under a pseudonym, and we resist defense efforts to unseal the record. The survivor’s name is the survivor’s to share, on the survivor’s timeline, when the survivor chooses.
The survivor’s family is part of the team. Families are often the first to recognize that something has changed, and they are the first line of practical and emotional support. We keep the family informed, set expectations honestly, and explain the law in plain English. We have handled cases for non-English-speaking families, and our firm is fully bilingual; we have the capacity to work with a Spanish-speaking family at every stage.
Why Attorney911 for This Case
This is not a case for a firm that does not know the TVPRA, the franchisor cases, the SeaTac corridor, or the forensic economics of trafficking recovery. It is a case for a trial team that has done it.
Ralph P. Manginello has been a Texas-licensed trial attorney since November 6, 1998, with more than twenty-seven years of courtroom practice, including federal court. He is a graduate of South Texas College of Law Houston and a former journalist. His practice has included commercial-vehicle, catastrophic-injury, and wrongful-death cases for more than two decades, and he leads the firm with a competitor’s hatred of losing and a journalist’s instinct for the document that breaks the case. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas, and he is bilingual in Spanish. He brings the firm’s trial work on trafficking cases, including the federal court cases the firm accepts through local counsel where required.
Lupe Peña joined the firm and brought a perspective no other plaintiff firm in this space matches: he was a former insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He knows how the adjuster sets the reserve in the first forty-eight hours, how the software values the claim, how the IME-doctor selection process works, how surveillance is deployed, and how the carrier delays until the statute runs. He now uses that knowledge for the survivor, not against her. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, is a former financial-services professional who came to the law as a second career, and is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch. He is fully bilingual, and he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. His practice covers personal injury, commercial and construction litigation, wrongful death, dram-shop, trucking, and car and eighteen-wheeler crashes, and he is the lead attorney on the firm’s most aggressive insurance-coverage fights.
Together, Ralph and Lupe lead a trial team that has built its practice on the cases other firms decline. The firm works on a contingency fee: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case proceeds to trial. The firm does not get paid unless it wins. The consultation is free, the case evaluation is free, the preservation letter is free, the public-records requests are free, and the firm’s twenty-four-hour live staff is not an answering service; it is the firm’s own people, in English and in Spanish. Hablamos Espanol. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Call We Want You to Make
If you are a survivor, a parent, a sibling, a grandparent, or a guardian, and you believe a child was trafficked at a Motel 6 or any other lodging property in SeaTac, anywhere in King County, or anywhere in Washington, we want to hear from you. The call is free, the conversation is confidential, and you do not have to know whether you want to file a case before you call. You only have to know that what happened was not your fault and not your child’s fault, and that the law was written to give you a path forward.
The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. You can also reach us through our contact page or learn more about the firm’s broader practice areas at our practice areas overview. For a specific look at how we handle wrongful death claims and brain injury cases that frequently intersect with trafficking and exploitation, see the linked pages.
Frequently Asked Questions
My child was trafficked at a Motel 6 in SeaTac. How do I know if we have a case?
If your child was a minor at the time, the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act at 18 U.S.C. § 1595 gives her a private right of action against anyone who knowingly benefited from a venture that trafficked her. That includes the franchise operator at the property and, in many cases, the corporate parent. The first step is a free, confidential consultation where we review the facts and tell you honestly whether the elements are present.
How long do I have to file a trafficking lawsuit in Washington?
The federal TVPRA gives a survivor ten years from the act or ten years after the survivor turns eighteen, whichever is later, which can extend a childhood case into the survivor’s late twenties. Washington state law provides its own extended deadlines for childhood sexual abuse and exploitation claims. The exact deadline depends on the specific theory of recovery, and we run that analysis on the first call. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What if the trafficker was caught and convicted? Does that change the civil case?
A criminal conviction helps, but a civil TVPRA case does not require a criminal conviction. The civil case is brought by the survivor against the corporate beneficiaries, not against the trafficker, and the burden of proof is lower. We use the discovery tools in the civil case to obtain the police reports, forensic interviews, and law-enforcement records that the criminal investigation produced. The civil case is the survivor’s case, controlled by the survivor, and aimed at the money, not at prison time.
How do you prove the hotel “knew or should have known”?
Through the hotel’s own records. Key-card logs, guest folios, housekeeping notes, incident reports, prior police calls, brand-issued anti-trafficking training materials, and the testimony of the desk clerks, housekeeping staff, and managers who saw what was happening and either did not recognize it or chose not to act. The brand’s national anti-trafficking policies are particularly powerful evidence, because they tell the jury exactly what the company trained its staff to look for, and we compare that list to what the staff saw and ignored at your child’s property.
Who do you actually sue: the local motel or the Motel 6 brand?
Both. We name the corporate parent (G6 Hospitality), the franchise operator (SeaTac Hotels, LLC), the on-site management company, and any third-party staffing company that supplied desk clerks. The federal TVPRA allows claims against each layer, and Washington law supports negligent security and negligent hiring claims against the entity that controlled the property. Naming the right defendants is half the fight.
How much is a Motel 6 trafficking case worth?
The honest answer is that every case is different. Cases involving a minor, repeated exploitation, documented PTSD, and a defendant with a pattern of similar conduct have produced verdicts in the millions and, where the conduct is egregious, in the tens of millions and beyond. The case value is built from a life-care plan, a forensic economist’s projection of lost earning capacity, the cost of lifelong treatment, and, where warranted, a punitive component. We will not promise a number, but we will show you the math a jury will see. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Will my child have to testify in court?
Most trafficking cases resolve before trial. When they do not, we work hard to protect the survivor’s privacy. The survivor’s forensic interview, taken in a child-friendly setting with a trained interviewer and recorded under protocols designed to minimize further trauma, is often admitted in lieu of live testimony. Where live testimony is necessary, the trial team prepares the survivor for weeks, with a trauma-informed approach that keeps the survivor in control. The defense does not get to ambush a trafficking survivor in open court without a fight.
What if the Motel 6 says it screened the trafficker?
Background checks at hire are not the standard of care. The standard of care is what the front desk clerk did when the same man checked in for the seventh time with a different girl, when the room was paid in cash, when housekeeping was refused for days, when used condoms appeared in the trash, and when a frightened girl was never seen at the desk. The brand’s own anti-trafficking training materials tell staff exactly what to look for, and we put those materials in front of the jury.
What if the motel says it had no idea, and the surveillance is gone?
A motel cannot credibly claim ignorance in a corridor the State Patrol has documented, in a brand sued six times for the same conduct, at a property where the franchise operator has been named in earlier cases. A missing surveillance tape, after a written preservation demand, is a spoliation problem for the defense, not a victory. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) and Washington’s spoliation law allow the jury to be instructed that the missing tape would have been unfavorable, and in some circumstances allow default judgment against the spoliating party. We move fast precisely so the defense cannot use its own deletion cycle as a defense.
How long does a federal trafficking case take?
Eighteen to thirty months from filing to trial is typical in the Western District of Washington. Cases that resolve earlier, after the depositions of the general manager and the corporate safety director, often do so because the defense has been forced to confront its own records. We do not delay. We do not settle for nuisance value. We prepare every case for trial, and we have found that the cases prepared for trial are the cases that settle for the right number.
What does it cost to hire Attorney911 for a trafficking case?
The consultation is free. The case evaluation is free. The preservation letter is free. If we accept the case, we work on a contingency fee: 33.33% of the recovery before trial, 40% if the case proceeds to trial. We do not get paid unless we win. There is no hourly billing, no retainer, no out-of-pocket cost to the family, and no surprise invoice. The firm’s policy, set in 2001, is the same today: a family that has been through what yours has been through should not pay to be heard.
Will the case be public? Will my child’s name be in the complaint?
The complaint in a minor’s case is filed under seal and the child is identified by a pseudonym. The case becomes public only if the defense moves to unseal, and we resist that motion aggressively. The survivor’s name is the survivor’s to share, on the survivor’s timeline, when the survivor chooses. We have never allowed a defense motion to unseal to go unopposed, and we have never lost that fight when we have opposed it.
Can I file a case if the trafficking happened years ago?
The federal TVPRA gives a survivor ten years from the act or ten years after the survivor turns eighteen, whichever is later. Washington state law provides its own extended deadlines for childhood sexual abuse and exploitation. The longer the gap, the harder the evidence, but not impossible, and the defense has to prove laches rather than the survivor having to disprove a hard deadline. Call us. We will tell you honestly what the deadline is in your case.
Who is the franchise operator at the SeaTac Motel 6 properties?
The current complaint names SeaTac Hotels, LLC as the franchise operator. Franchise operators can change. We confirm the operating entity at the time of the trafficking through the King County Recorder’s Office, the Washington Secretary of State, and the franchise filings on record with the Washington State Department of Revenue. The name on the door and the name on the lawsuit should be the same.
Is this a federal or a state case?
Both. The TVPRA claim is federal, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The Washington-law claims for negligent security, negligent hiring, and premises liability ride alongside under supplemental jurisdiction. The advantage of the federal forum is the federal civil-remedy statute, the federal rules of evidence, and the federal discovery tools. The advantage of the Washington-law claims is the state’s no-cap regime, the pure comparative-fault rule, and the state’s recognition of the foreseeability of trafficking in a documented corridor.
What if my family is undocumented?
Immigration status is not a barrier to a TVPRA case. The federal statute was written specifically to protect trafficking survivors, including survivors who were trafficked into the country, and the law does not condition the civil remedy on immigration status. The defense will sometimes try to use status as leverage. The law does not allow that, and we do not allow it in our cases.
My child does not want to press charges against the trafficker. Can we still sue the hotel?
Yes. The TVPRA civil case is the survivor’s case, not the prosecutor’s. The survivor can pursue the hotel, the franchise operator, and the corporate parent for damages without participating in the criminal prosecution of the trafficker. Many survivors want the corporate beneficiaries held accountable more than they want the trafficker in prison. That is a choice the survivor gets to make, on her own timeline, with our help.
How do I reach the firm right now?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The line is staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in English and in Spanish. You can also use the contact page to send a confidential message. We respond the same day. If you are ready to talk, we are ready to listen. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
If you are reading this because a child you love was exploited, we want you to know that the law was written for her, that the evidence clock is real, and that the firms that profit from these corridors are answerable in federal court. We work on a contingent fee, the consultation is free, and the case will be prepared the way Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña prepare every case they accept: as if it will be tried, with the same team that has spent more than two decades in courtrooms fighting the same kinds of defendants. Hablamos Espanol. 1-888-ATTY-911.