Skokie, Illinois

Skokie Hotel Sexual Assault & Premises Liability Lawyers — Attorney911 Holds InterContinental Hotels Group and Its Holiday Inn Northshore for Negligent Security, Sending an On-Duty Male Guard to a Vulnerable, Intoxicated Guest’s Room After Hours, DNA Evidence Matched the Assault Yet the Hotel Retained Him for Over a Year, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Attorney Who Knows How the Claims Machine Undervalues Emotional Distress, We Preserve the Keycard Logs and Security Footage Before the Overwrite, $1.8M Jury Verdict for Karla Gress’s Loss of a Normal Life, Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

A Stranger With a Master Key: How a Hotel’s Own Security Guard Became the Danger The phone call that started it came from a business traveler who was just trying to get her air conditioning fixed. She had done everything right. She chose a nationally branded hotel. She checked in under her own name. She called the front desk from the safety of her locked room. She trusted that the person who knocked on her door in response to that call was, in fact, a hotel employee sent to help her. The person who walked through that door was the hotel’s on-duty security guard. He had a master key. He had the room number because the front desk gave it to him. He had been sent to the room of a woman the front desk knew was intoxicated, alone, late at night. He used that key. He had done it before. The hotel knew. The evidence that broke this case open sits in a Cook County courtroom. A jury returned a $1.8 million verdict after hearing what the hotel already knew about the man they kept on the payroll, the warnings they ignored, and the policy they never changed. We…

Hotel Sexual Assault & Negligent Security Lawsuit in Skokie: $1.8M Verdict for Karla Gress After Holiday Inn Chicago Northshore Security Guard Rape — Attorney911 Holds InterContinental Hotels Group & Lakhani Hospitality Accountable for Failing to Protect Guests, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Undervalues These Cases, We Preserve the Electronic Keycard Logs & DNA Evidence Before They Disappear, Illinois Premises Liability Law & the Hotel’s Duty of Care, Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

When the Person Hired to Protect You Becomes the One Who Destroys Your Life She was on a business trip. She had a room key, a reservation, and the reasonable belief that the uniformed guard at the front of the Holiday Inn Chicago Northshore in Skokie was there to keep her safe. He wasn’t. On October 2, 2013, an on-duty security guard employed by the hotel raped her in her own room. DNA later linked him to the crime. He was fired, but not for more than a year afterward, and not for the assault. No criminal charges were ever filed. Yet a Cook County jury, years later, found the hotel’s owner legally responsible for the horror that an employee inflicted behind a closed door — and awarded $1.8 million to the survivor. That verdict tells you something important about how Illinois law treats the relationship between an innkeeper and a guest. It tells you that a hotel cannot point at the criminal act of its own employee and say, “Not our problem.” It tells you that the security uniform a guest is trained to trust creates a duty, and that duty can be breached with a verdict at the…