You Were Asleep in a Room You Paid For. Someone Got the Key.
We are talking to one person when we write this page. You are reading it at 1 a.m. or 6 a.m. or in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, and you are not reading it for fun. You are reading it because you paid for a room at a motel in Sioux Falls, you closed the door, you lay down, and a man got in. Not through a window. Not by kicking the door in. He got a key. From the manager’s office. And then he came to your room, and he put his hands on you while you slept.
That is what the police report says happened on the night in question at the Rushmore Motel on East 10th Street. The man who did it is in the criminal system. He will face a burglary charge and a sexual-contact-without-consent charge. That is the criminal case. It is the State of South Dakota’s case, not yours. It will not pay for the therapy you may need for years, the nights you cannot sleep in a locked room anymore, the marriage that has to carry this, or the fact that a place you trusted with your safety treated your room number like a piece of paper that anyone walking past the front desk could pick up.
This page is about the other case. The civil case. The case where we name the motel — the people who owned it, the people who managed it, the people who were supposed to keep the keys to your room in the right hands — and we ask a Minnehaha County jury to hold them responsible for what their carelessness let happen to you. It is a different kind of fight, with a different burden of proof, and it carries a different kind of remedy: actual money damages for the harm done to you.
We have done this work across South Dakota for more than two decades. We are the trial team at Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Ralph P. Manginello has been licensed in Texas since 1998 and runs our catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death practice with twenty-seven-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court; he is a journalist by training, a trial lawyer by calling, and the person clients call when the other side has more lawyers than sense. Lupe Peña has been licensed since 2012 and spent years on the other side of the table inside a national insurance-defense firm before he came to work for injured people; he knows exactly how the claim handler reads your file, exactly what arguments the adjuster is going to run, and exactly where those arguments fall apart. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish. Together we take South Dakota negligent-security and premises-liability cases — including motel and hotel sexual-assault cases — on a contingency fee: you pay nothing unless we win, and your first call is a free 24/7 consultation with a real person on our staff, not a call center. If you are ready to talk, the number is 1-888-ATTY-911.
This page walks you through what the law in South Dakota actually says, what the motel owed you, what they probably failed to do, what the criminal case does and does not do for you, and what a civil case against the motel can recover. None of this is generic. Every paragraph is built around the facts of what happened to you in that room.
Why the Motel — Not Just the Attacker — Can Be on the Hook
Injured people often call us and ask the same question in different words. “How can the motel be responsible for what a stranger did to me? He is the one who did it.” That is a fair question, and it deserves a precise answer.
The motel is not being sued for his conduct. He is being held accountable for his own conduct, criminally. The motel is being sued for its own conduct — for the choices the motel made in the hours, days, and months before he walked into your room. The law calls this a “premises liability” case, or, where the harm is a third-party criminal act like a sexual assault, a “negligent security” case. The core legal idea is simple, even if the proof is hard: when a business invites you onto its property in exchange for money, and the business knows (or should know) that certain criminal acts are reasonably likely to occur on its property, and the business fails to take reasonable steps to prevent those acts, and you are injured as a result, the business is on the hook for the harm its own failure caused or allowed.
This is not a fringe theory. It is the law in South Dakota and in every state around it. Hotels and motels are held to a heightened duty precisely because they hold themselves out as safe places to sleep. They advertise security. They issue key cards. They post signs. They tell you to lock your door. All of that is part of the bargain — and when the bargain is broken in the way the police report describes, the law gives you a remedy.
The motel will try to argue that the attacker’s conduct was a “superseding cause” that breaks the chain of responsibility. That is the insurance industry’s favorite word. We will show, in detail below, why that argument fails on facts like these — where the motel gave the attacker the instrument (the key) that made the attack possible, where the motel knew or should have known the attacker posed a risk, and where the attack happened in a space the motel controlled and promised to keep safe.
The Key-Control Failure Is the Center of Your Case
We want to spend an entire section on this because it is the single most important fact in your case, and because it is the fact the insurance company will work hardest to make go away.
A motel room key is not a piece of metal. In the eyes of the law, it is a representation. When the front desk clerk hands you a keycard or a brass key, the motel is telling you two things. First, that the door to your room will only be opened by you, because you are the only person who was given a working key. Second, that any other person who tries to open that door without authorization is a trespasser, and the motel will treat them as one. The whole physical-security promise of a motel collapses to that one fact: the key.
Now read the police report again, slowly. The intruder got the key. Not from you. Not because you lost it. He got it from the manager’s office. The manager gave it to him, or left it where he could take it, or failed to secure it in a way that allowed him to take it. Whichever of those is true — and we will find out which through discovery — the result is the same. The motel, through its own employee and its own key-control system (or lack of one), handed the attacker the tool he used to enter your room.
This is not a case where a man climbed through a bathroom window or kicked in a patio door. It is a case where the door was opened with the motel’s own key, given or made available by the motel’s own employee, at a time when the motel was responsible for the safety of every guest in the building. The fact that the man was known to the manager makes it worse, not better, for the motel — because it transforms the failure from an abstract key-control lapse into a specific, identifiable failure to refuse a key to a person who should not have had one.
We will demand in discovery every document the motel has relating to key control. That includes:
- Any written key-control policy the motel has, including how master keys are stored, who has access to them, and how key issuance to guests is documented.
- The training materials the front-desk staff were given about key control.
- The motel incident log for the night in question, including any record of the manager’s interactions at the front desk.
- The motel’s guest registration records for the relevant night.
- The motel register or ledger of key issuance if one exists.
- The motel’s employee schedule, so we can see who was on the front desk at 1:30 a.m.
- The personnel file of the manager who provided the key, including any prior complaints, any prior incidents involving that manager and unauthorized key issuance, and any disciplinary history.
- The motel’s surveillance video from the front desk, the hallway, and the parking lot for the relevant hours, plus the motel’s video retention policy.
South Dakota lodging establishments are also regulated at the administrative level. The South Dakota Administrative Rules governing lodging establishments, ARSD Chapter 44:02:02, impose baseline duties on innkeepers that include obligations related to guest safety, key control, and the maintenance of guest records. While the precise text of those rules governs specific licensing and inspection requirements, the broader principle is clear: a lodging establishment that accepts guests and rents rooms in South Dakota is not free to run its key board however its night manager pleases. We will pull the motel’s compliance records and its history with the South Dakota Department of Health’s lodging-establishment inspection program to determine whether the motel was meeting the minimum standards of its own industry when this happened to you.
We mention all of this now so you understand the depth of the factual work that has to happen in your case. When we say we are going to “investigate the motel,” we mean we are going to subpoena their records, depose their employees, and put their own documents in front of a jury until the jury sees the motel exactly as it was on the night you were assaulted.
South Dakota’s Comparative-Fault Rule — Why a Jury Will Not Hold You to Blame
South Dakota is one of the few states in the country that follows a “slight-gross” comparative-fault rule, codified at SDCL § 20-9-2. Under that rule, a plaintiff whose own fault is “slight” compared to the defendant’s can still recover, and the recovery is reduced in proportion to the plaintiff’s percentage of fault. The plaintiff is barred only when the plaintiff’s fault is “gross” — meaning greater than the defendant’s. We have seen insurance adjusters try to use comparative-fault arguments to push a sexual-assault victim into accepting a small settlement, on the theory that the victim should not have been asleep, or should not have been at that motel, or should not have been traveling alone. Those arguments almost always fail, and the slight-gross rule is part of the reason why.
In a negligent-security case arising from a sexual assault, the motel is going to argue one or more of the following comparative-fault theories, and we will defeat each one in turn.
“The victim was asleep.” Sleeping is not fault. Sleeping is exactly what the motel promised to allow you to do safely. There is no version of South Dakota law that reduces a sexual-assault victim’s recovery because she was asleep at the time. The motel’s duty to protect you was highest at the moment you were most vulnerable, and the motel failed.
“The victim was at a budget motel on East 10th Street.” South Dakota law does not recognize a “you got what you paid for” defense to a premises-liability claim. A motel that rents rooms for $45 a night owes the same duty of reasonable care as a hotel that rents rooms for $250 a night. The duty does not scale with the room rate.
“The victim did not lock the deadbolt.” We will investigate whether the deadbolt was actually engaged, whether the room was equipped with a functional deadbolt, and whether the motel trained its guests to use it. Even where a guest did not engage a secondary lock, that does not excuse a motel that handed the master key to an unauthorized person. The proximate cause of your assault was not the unlocked deadbolt; it was the key the motel gave to a man who had no right to it.
“The victim knew the attacker.” Knowing the attacker is not comparative fault. If anything, it is more evidence of foreseeability: the motel manager’s relationship with the attacker placed the motel in a position to assess the risk he posed and to keep him away from your room, and the motel failed to do so.
The slight-gross rule and South Dakota’s specific application of comparative fault in premises-liability cases work in your favor. Even if a jury were to assign you some small percentage of fault — which we do not concede — that percentage will be slight, and your recovery will be reduced only by that small percentage, not eliminated. The jury will hear the full picture of what the motel did and did not do, and the picture is not a picture of you being careless. It is a picture of a motel that handed a key to a man it knew and then went back to doing whatever it was doing while he walked down the hall to your room.
The Defendants in Your Case — Who We Name and Why
The motel and the man who assaulted you are not the only defendants in your case. The structure of a negligent-security claim against a motel typically includes several layers, and we name the right defendants in the right order for a reason.
The motel operating entity. The first defendant is the entity that actually owns and operates the Rushmore Motel. In Sioux Falls, that may be a single LLC, a partnership, a sole proprietorship, or a corporate chain operating through a local franchise. We will identify the precise entity by pulling the motel’s business registration with the South Dakota Secretary of State, its assumed-name filings, and its lodging-establishment license with the South Dakota Department of Health. We will name the operating entity in the complaint, and we will serve that entity.
The motel property owner. If the motel property is owned by a separate entity from the operator — and at many motels, it is — we will name the property owner as well. Property owners in South Dakota owe duties to guests of the business operating on the property, and those duties can overlap with the operator’s duties, particularly where the property owner has retained control over security systems, exterior lighting, or parking-lot maintenance.
The on-site manager. The manager who, according to the police report, gave the attacker access to the key may be a named defendant in his or her individual capacity in certain circumstances. The legal theory is that the manager, as the motel’s agent, owed you a duty of reasonable care and breached that duty by handing the key to a person known to pose a risk. Individual-capacity claims against the manager are a piece of the overall strategy, not always the centerpiece. We will explain to you when and how to add the manager as a defendant.
The insurance carrier. The motel does not defend itself out of pocket. It defends itself through a commercial general liability (CGL) policy, often with a self-insured retention and excess coverage stacked above. We will identify the carrier and the policy as early as possible, because the carrier is the entity that will actually pay any judgment or settlement, and because the carrier’s coverage positions — including any “assault and battery” exclusion, any “criminal acts” exclusion, or any “expected or intended” exclusion — will shape the litigation strategy from day one. South Dakota law on insurance-coverage exclusions is fact-specific, and the carrier’s own coverage counsel will be arguing for the broadest possible exclusion. We will be arguing for the narrowest possible exclusion, with the result that the carrier has to indemnify the motel and pay your damages.
The attacker, in a separate civil action. We will discuss with you whether to add the attacker as a defendant in your civil case. In many sexual-assault cases, the attacker’s own homeowner’s or renter’s insurance may provide some coverage, and the attacker’s personal assets (limited as they may be) can be reached through a civil judgment. The criminal restitution order, if the court enters one, can also be enforced as a civil judgment. The strategic decision depends on the attacker’s insurance posture, his known assets, and the criminal-case timing. We will lay this out for you in detail.
The point of this section is not to give you a list of names. The point is to show you that the motel is not the end of the inquiry. There is a corporate family behind the motel, there is an insurance tower behind the motel, and there is the attacker himself. We name every defendant who has a connection to the harm and a pocket to reach, and we go after each one in the order that makes strategic sense.
How the Insurance Company Will Defend Your Case — and How We Beat Each Defense
We have spent years on the other side of these cases. We know the playbook. Here is what the insurance adjuster is going to do, in the order they are going to do it, and here is what we are going to do at every step.
Play One: The Recorded Statement. Within days of your call to the motel or to the insurer, an adjuster will call you. The adjuster will sound sympathetic. The adjuster will say things like, “We just want to understand what happened,” or “We want to make sure you’re getting the help you need,” or “Can you just walk me through it one more time?” The call is being recorded, and the recording is going to be used against you. The adjuster is not your friend. The adjuster is gathering statements that can be used to minimize your damages, to suggest that you were not really hurt, or to pin percentage-of-fault on you. The counter is simple: do not give a recorded statement without us on the line. Politely tell the adjuster that you are represented by counsel and that all communication should go through your lawyer. If the adjuster pushes, refer the adjuster to us. The minute you accept a recorded statement without counsel present, you have given up a piece of your case you cannot get back.
Play Two: The Quick Check. Within weeks, often before you have even talked to a lawyer, the insurer will send you a small check with a release printed on the back. The check might be a few hundred dollars. The release will be a full and final settlement of every claim you have against the motel, forever, for the cost of a tank of gas. The insurer counts on you cashing the check before you understand what you gave up. The counter is even simpler: do not cash the check. Do not sign the release. Bring it to us. We will explain in plain English what the release says and why it is a trap, and we will send it back to the insurer with a clear message that you are not signing away your rights for a token payment.
Play Three: The Independent Medical Examination. Once you are in treatment, the insurer will ask you to attend an “independent medical examination.” The name is a lie. There is nothing independent about it. The doctor is paid by the insurer, selected by the insurer, and produces a report for the insurer. The IME is a vehicle for the insurer to put a paid physician on the stand to testify that your injuries are not as serious as you claim, that your treatment is excessive, or that some of your symptoms are pre-existing or unrelated. The counter is to know that an IME is a tool, not a requirement. In South Dakota, the insurer can demand an IME under certain conditions set by the court, and we will negotiate the scope, the doctor, and the timing. We will prepare you for the exam, we will attend if the court allows, and we will cross-examine the IME doctor at trial if the report is unfavorable.
Play Four: The Delay. The insurer will let months pass without meaningful communication. The adjuster will go quiet. The defense lawyer will go quiet. The case will sit. The insurer is betting that you will get tired, run out of patience, or need money badly enough to accept a lowball offer. The counter is time and pressure. We know how to keep pressure on. We know how to set deadlines. We know how to file suit when the case is ready, and we know how to move the case through the South Dakota court system when the insurer tries to run out the clock. The South Dakota judiciary moves cases, and we move them faster.
Play Five: The Comparative-Fault Argument. We covered this in detail above. The insurer will argue that you share fault. The counter is the slight-gross rule and the lack of any genuine comparative fault on facts like these. We will not let the insurer paint you as careless. We will show the jury a motel that failed at every step, and a victim who was asleep in a room she paid for.
Play Six: The Sympathy Flip. In some cases, the insurer will try to use your criminal history, your mental-health history, your social-media posts, or your prior sexual history against you. South Dakota’s rape-shield law and the rules of evidence limit the insurer’s ability to introduce this material, and we will object at every turn. Your past is not on trial. What is on trial is the motel’s failure to keep you safe.
The bottom line: every play the insurer runs has a counter, and we know the counters because we have run them ourselves in our prior work on the other side of these cases. You do not have to learn the playbook. That is what we are for.
What Your Case Is Worth — An Honest Range
We are asked this question in every consultation, and we always give the same answer: it depends on the facts. But we can give you a range based on what we know and what comparable cases in South Dakota and similar jurisdictions have produced.
The floor. Even a relatively simple negligent-security case — the motel gave the key to the wrong person, the guest was assaulted, the guest has documented psychological harm requiring treatment — produces a meaningful settlement or verdict. The motel carries commercial general liability insurance with limits that often start in the millions of dollars. The insurer will pay to make the case go away, because the alternative is a trial in which the jury sees the police report and hears the manager explain why he gave the key to a man known to the motel. Insurers do not want juries to see that, and they will pay real money to prevent it.
The middle. A negligent-security case with documented PTSD, prior incidents at the motel that the motel should have known about, a key-control failure that was systemic, and a punitive-damages count that survives a motion to dismiss typically resolves in the mid-six figures to low-seven figures. The exact number depends on the strength of the medical documentation, the strength of the foreseeability evidence, the venue (Minnehaha County juries vs. rural South Dakota juries), and the identity of the insurer.
The ceiling. The strongest negligent-security cases against hotel and motel defendants — cases with egregious prior-incident histories, surveillance video of the assault itself, expert testimony on industry security standards, and devastating cross-examination of the motel’s corporate representatives — have produced verdicts in the seven-figure and low-eight-figure range. A jury in Minnehaha County, hearing the full story of what was done to you, is capable of returning a verdict at this level. We will pursue every dollar your case is worth, and we will not settle short of the full value.
The value of your case is not a number we can give you on this page. It is a number we will work out together, after we have reviewed the motel records, the police records, your medical records, and the surveillance video (if it survives). What we can tell you is that the case has real value, and that the value is in the seven-figure range, not the low five figures the insurer will offer first. If the insurer offers you a number that does not reflect the seriousness of what was done to you, we will take the case to trial.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the motel even though the attacker was the one who actually touched me?
Yes. The motel is responsible for its own conduct, not for the attacker’s. The legal theory is that the motel’s failure to secure its keys, to screen its night staff, and to keep known risks away from guest rooms created the conditions that made the assault possible. Under South Dakota law, a business that knows (or should know) that foreseeable criminal acts are likely to occur on its property and fails to take reasonable steps to prevent them is liable for the resulting harm. You are suing the motel for its own negligence, not for the attacker’s acts.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit in South Dakota?
Three years from the date the assault occurred, under SDCL § 15-2-14. The clock can be tolled (paused) in some circumstances under the discovery rule, particularly for psychological injuries that develop over time. The safest course is to call us as soon as possible so we can evaluate the accrual date for your case. If you wait until the deadline is near, our options narrow significantly.
What if I knew the attacker? Does that hurt my case?
No. Knowing the attacker does not reduce your recovery. In fact, it often strengthens the case, because the motel’s relationship with the attacker is itself evidence of foreseeability. A motel whose manager knows a particular person well enough to give him a key is a motel that had every opportunity to assess the risk he posed and to keep him away from your room. The motel cannot use the fact that you also knew him as a defense.
What kind of damages can I recover?
Compensatory damages for your economic losses (medical bills, therapy costs, lost wages, diminished earning capacity) and your non-economic losses (pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of dignity, PTSD and related conditions). In addition, if the evidence supports it, we will seek punitive damages under SDCL § 21-3-2 to punish the motel for reckless or malicious conduct and to deter similar conduct in the future. South Dakota does not cap non-economic damages in most personal-injury cases.
How much is my case worth?
We cannot give you a number on a webpage. What we can tell you is that negligent-security cases against motel and hotel defendants in cases like this routinely resolve in the six- and seven-figure range, and that the strongest cases produce seven-figure and low-eight-figure verdicts. The value of your case depends on the strength of the medical documentation, the foreseeability evidence, the prior-incident history, the venue, and the identity of the insurer. We will give you our honest range after we have reviewed the records.
How do I pay for a lawyer?
You do not, unless we win. We handle negligent-security cases on a contingency fee. We advance the costs of litigation (filing fees, expert witnesses, depositions, medical records retrieval), and we recover those costs out of any settlement or verdict. The fee is a percentage of the recovery. You pay nothing out of pocket. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Will I have to go to court?
Most negligent-security cases settle before trial. The insurer typically agrees to a settlement once it sees the strength of the records and the strength of the medical documentation. If the case does not settle, and if we believe a trial is the right path, we will prepare you for every stage of the courtroom process — depositions, hearings, and ultimately the trial itself. We have tried cases across South Dakota and the surrounding states. We are not afraid of a courtroom, and the insurer knows it.
What if I already gave a recorded statement to the insurance company?
Do not panic, and do not assume the case is over. Recorded statements can be used against you, but they are rarely fatal to a case, especially when the underlying evidence (the police report, the medical records, the motel records) is strong. We will review the statement with you, identify any statements that can be used against you, and build the rest of the case around them. The statement does not change the fundamental facts of what happened, and it does not change the motel’s legal duty.
What if I already signed a release or cashed a small check from the insurer?
Bring the check and the release to us immediately. Do not sign anything else, do not cash any other check, and do not talk to the insurer. Depending on the language of the release, the situation may be reversible. Even if the release is broad, the facts of your case may support a separate claim against an entity the release did not cover (for example, the attacker, the property owner, or a different insurance policy). We will review the document and tell you where you stand.
Will the criminal case help or hurt my civil case?
It will help. The criminal case establishes, through the police investigation and any plea or verdict, that the attacker committed the acts you allege. That is powerful evidence in the civil case. The criminal case does not, however, give you money. Only the civil case gives you money. The two cases run on parallel tracks, and we will make sure the civil case is not delayed by the criminal case and that your testimony in one does not undermine you in the other.
How do I get started?
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day. We will tell you on the phone whether we can help. If we can, we will start the investigation the same day. Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full consultations in Spanish, and our bilingual staff will make sure your family is heard in the language you pray in.
If You Are Ready to Talk
We answer the phone. We answer it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The conversation is confidential. There is no obligation. There is no script. There is a real lawyer on the other end of the line, and the lawyer will tell you the truth about your case, including telling you if we are not the right fit. If we are the right fit, we will start the investigation the same day. The first letter we send will be a preservation letter to the motel, demanding that the motel freeze every surveillance tape, every key-control record, every incident log, and every employee file before the motel’s routine retention cycle destroys the evidence that proves what it did.
You are not the first person this has happened to. You are not alone. And the place where you were assaulted is going to be held to account.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. Hablamos Español.
Contact Attorney911 for a free, confidential consultation about your Sioux Falls motel sexual assault case · Learn more about our premises-liability and negligent-security practice · Meet Ralph P. Manginello · Meet Lupe Peña · See how we handle catastrophic injury cases like yours · Read our guide to what to do after a traumatic injury · Watch our guide to commercial-vehicle and premises cases · Read about how contingency fees work in injury cases
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case Attorney911 accepts is taken on a contingency fee — you pay nothing unless we recover for you. The first consultation is free and confidential. 1-888-ATTY-911.
