You Are Not Alone, and You Have Rights the Hotel Does Not Want You to Know About
The knock on the door is the moment everything stops making sense. The room you thought you were renting for the night became a cage. The man who handed you the key was not really running the front desk, even though he acted like it. The hotel with the clean sign out front saw what was happening, week after week, and took the money anyway.
You are reading this because something happened to you, or to someone you love, in a motel near SeaTac. Maybe it was the strip along International Boulevard, the long corridor of budget lodging that runs between SeaTac and Tukwila, where a man can rent a room by the hour in cash and the cameras do not reach the parking lot. Maybe it was closer to the airport, where every week thousands of travelers pass through motels that operate in plain view. The exact address matters less than what was done there, and what the law now lets you do about it.
Federal law gives survivors of sex trafficking a weapon that most people never hear about. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the TVPRA, lets a survivor sue not just the trafficker who hurt her, but the motel that took the room money while the warning signs piled up at the front desk. We built this page to walk you through what that law does, what the hotel knew, how the evidence disappears if you wait, what the case is worth, and how to move from this moment of reading alone to a conversation with a lawyer who has done this work before.
We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We represent survivors of human trafficking across the country, including Washington State. Our senior trial attorney Ralph Manginello has spent more than 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court, building cases against hotels, motels, and the brands that license their names. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, came to our side from a national insurance-defense firm where he learned exactly how carriers price, delay, and undervalue claims like yours. He now works for you. We do not charge a fee unless we win your case, and the consultation is free.
Let us show you what your case looks like from the inside.
The Federal Civil Rights Law Most Survivors Never Hear About
We are going to explain the law the way we wish someone had explained it to us when we first started doing this work. The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act contains a civil-remedy provision that sits at 18 U.S.C. § 1595(a). The statute reads, in plain English:
“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.”
That single sentence is doing more work than it looks. It does four things that together are extraordinary. It gives the survivor the right to sue. It expands who can be sued, beyond just the trafficker, to anyone who knowingly benefited from the venture. It makes a “should have known” standard enough, so the survivor does not have to prove the motel actually sat down and decided to participate. And it awards damages plus reasonable attorneys’ fees, which means the survivor’s lawyers get paid by the defendant if they win.
The clock is generous. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1595(c), the survivor has ten years from when the cause of action arose to file suit, and if the survivor was a minor at the time of the trafficking, ten years from the day they turned eighteen. A person trafficked at age fifteen has until age twenty-eight to file under the federal statute alone. The Washington State deadline for personal injury is generally three years under RCW 4.16.080, but federal law controls this kind of claim and gives you the longer window.
The damages available under the TVPRA are also unusually strong. Washington state law does not allow punitive damages in personal-injury cases, but the TVPRA explicitly permits punitive damages on top of compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees. In the right case, the punitive component is what pushes the total into the seven-figure range.
The Shell Game: Why Naming the Right Defendant Matters as Much as Naming Any Defendant
When we file a TVPRA case on behalf of a survivor, the most common early mistake we see from families who have tried to handle things on their own is suing only the obvious name. They sue the motel, the one with the sign on the building, and stop there. Sometimes that is enough. Often it is not.
Major motel brands license their names to local owners who actually hold the property and run the front desk. The brand collects royalties for the right to use the flag, sets standards for how the property must be operated, and sometimes supplies the reservation system, the loyalty program, and the brand-wide employee training. In Washington, you will see this structure most often with chains like Motel 6, Super 8, Days Inn, Rodeway Inn, Econo Lodge, and others that license their names to locally owned and operated limited-service properties. The SeaTac corridor is full of exactly these properties.
That corporate structure is the shield the defense uses to deflect blame. The brand will say it does not own or operate the property. The local owner will say the brand dictates the standards and runs the training. Each points at the other, and the survivor is left in the middle wondering who actually pays.
The law has a response. Federal courts have held that a survivor can proceed against both the local operator and the brand, depending on the facts. In Doe #1 v. Red Roof Inns, Inc., 21 F.4th 714 (11th Cir. 2021), the Eleventh Circuit affirmed dismissal of claims against the franchisor because the survivor had not plausibly alleged that the brand took part in the underlying trafficking venture. That case is the defense’s favorite citation. But other federal courts have reached the opposite conclusion on stronger pleadings. In M.A. v. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc., No. 2:19-cv-00849 (S.D. Ohio 2025), a federal judge denied summary judgment for the franchisor, ruling that collecting room revenue from a known trafficking venture, combined with brand-imposed operational control, was enough to put the case before a jury.
The point is not which case wins. The point is that the law is alive, and the law gives us tools to reach the deep pocket when the facts support it. We evaluate the franchise agreement, the brand operations manual, the reservation and loyalty system data, the training records, the corporate indemnification provisions, and the insurance structure, all of it, before we ever draft the complaint. We name the right defendants the first time.
How Much Is a Case Like This Worth
Every survivor asks this question, and every responsible lawyer answers it honestly. We cannot tell you what your specific case is worth until we know the facts, the venue, and the defendants. But we can tell you what cases like yours have produced, and we can tell you where your case fits in the range.
For an adult survivor trafficked at a SeaTac motel, the realistic case-value range runs from approximately $1.5 million on the low end to $15 million or more on the high end. The range exists because trafficking cases vary enormously. The low end reflects cases with shorter trafficking duration, less physical injury, and stronger contributory-factors arguments from the defense. The high end reflects cases involving minors, prolonged trafficking, significant physical or psychological injury, evidence of motel knowledge, and punitive damages.
Three drivers push a case toward the higher end of the range. First, the involvement of a minor under eighteen. Federal law treats trafficking of minors as one of the most aggravated forms of the offense, and juries respond accordingly. Second, the duration and severity of the trafficking. A survivor held for weeks, with multiple buyers per day, has a stronger claim for both compensatory and punitive damages than a survivor held for a single night. Third, the strength of the evidence against the motel. When the motel was on notice, when prior complaints exist, when the surveillance shows the front desk handing keys to a known trafficker, the punitive damages multiplier expands.
Washington law plays a role in the math. Washington is a pure comparative-fault state under RCW 4.22.005, meaning your recovery is reduced by your own share of fault, but not eliminated. The Washington Supreme Court ruled statutory caps on non-economic damages unconstitutional in Sofie v. Fibreboard Corp. in 1989, so there is no state cap on what a jury can award for pain, suffering, or loss of enjoyment of life. That combination, pure comparative fault with no cap, is one of the most plaintiff-friendly structures in the country.
For survivors who are not Washington residents, the federal TVPRA claim controls the punitive damages question. Federal law allows punitives, regardless of the state cap or no-cap rule on the state-law claim.
The economic portion of the case covers lifetime medical care for the psychological and physical injuries, future lost earnings, the cost of trauma therapy, and the long-term disability caused by PTSD and major depression. The non-economic portion covers pain, suffering, and the loss of the life the survivor would have lived if this had not happened. The punitive portion is what reaches into the defendant hotel’s pocket in a way that makes corporate counsel sit up straight, because it is the only part of the verdict that is meant to punish, not to compensate.
We will give you a real number once we know your case. We will not give you a number designed to make you sign a retainer. The point of the range we just gave you is to tell you that what happened to you has a market value, the defendants have insurance and assets to cover it, and we are willing to take the case on contingency precisely because we believe the value is real.
The Clock That Governs Your Case
If you are also bringing a Washington State law claim, and many of our clients do, the deadline is generally three years from the date of injury under RCW 4.16.080. That deadline is shorter than the ten-year federal window for TVPRA claims, and the tolling rules for minors are different. The shorter state deadline means that if you wait until year nine to call, the federal TVPRA claim is still alive but the state-law claims may be dead.
We always file both claims in the same case, in federal court where venue permits, so that the federal clock controls the case as a whole. But we do not want you to learn the difference the hard way. The single most important thing you can do today is call us before any deadline passes.
The Lives Behind the Law: Trauma-Informed Lawyering
We close this page with something that is not legal advice but is human. Most of the survivors who call us have never told anyone the full story. They have carried it alone. They are not ready to walk into a courtroom, and they may never be. Our job is to build a case that does not require them to.
The federal system allows deposition by written question, allows remote testimony, and permits expert testimony about trauma and memory that explains to a jury why a survivor’s account may be fragmented, partial, or delayed. We use trauma-informed practices throughout. We meet you where you are. We move at your pace. We never pressure you to talk about things you are not ready to discuss.
When a survivor first speaks to us, the most common fear we hear is the fear that no one will believe them. The federal indictment against the trafficker, the motel records that show what the staff saw, the pattern of calls for service, the surveillance footage, the housekeeping logs, all of these are ways of telling the story without putting you on the stand alone. The evidence does the work, not your voice.
We have seen survivors become plaintiffs. We have seen plaintiffs become witnesses. We have seen witnesses become advocates. The process is long. The law gives you time. We give you the team.
How to Reach Us Right Now
If you are a survivor of trafficking at a motel in SeaTac or anywhere in Washington State, if you are a family member trying to help someone you love, or if you are an advocate or counselor working with a survivor who needs a lawyer, please call us. The first conversation is free, confidential, and with a person, not a machine. We will listen. We will tell you whether we can help. We will not waste your time.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. That number reaches our 24-hour live staff. Direct line: (713) 528-9070. Cell: (713) 443-4781. Email ralph@atty911.com or lupe@atty911.com. Hablamos Español.
We do not get paid unless we win. We do not charge for the consultation. We have built motel-trafficking cases against the brands and the local operators. We know the federal law, we know the Washington courts, and we know how to make the insurance company and the brand write a check.
You do not have to face this alone. You are not alone. The law was written for you. We exist to use it.
About Attorney911 and our practice | Practice areas we cover | Meet Ralph Manginello | Meet Lupe Peña | Contact us today
If your case involves an 18-wheeler or commercial truck rather than a motel, we have handled those too. If you suffered a brain injury during the trafficking or in the escape, our brain injury practice is built for it. If a loved one did not survive, we also handle wrongful death claims. For workers who were trafficked through a labor scheme, our workplace accident practice covers those too. If the trafficking happened in a refinery or industrial setting, that work is part of our practice. If you are considering any kind of insurance claim alongside the trafficking case, we handle those too. Hablamos Español.
Ralph has also published educational videos that explain how these cases work, including a guide to commercial truck accidents, a guide to brain injury lawsuits, a guide to PTSD payouts after a car accident, and a guide to what to do after a car accident. Lupe has produced a guide to slip-and-fall cases against retailers like Walmart that shows how we hold corporate defendants accountable. We also serve Spanish-speaking clients and their families with full bilingual capacity.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.