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…