Hotel and Motel Guest Injury Claims

You check in to relax, not to end up in the ER. When a hotel or motel cuts corners on safety, guests get hurt — and Michigan premises law gives those guests real rights. Here's when a hotel is on the hook, and how to protect your claim.

Michigan sees millions of hotel and motel stays a year — business travelers in Southfield and Troy, tourists heading up north, families near the casinos and the lakes. A hotel is a business that invites you onto its property to make money, and Michigan law asks something in return: keep guests reasonably safe. When it doesn't, and you're injured as a result, you may have a premises liability claim.

The Duty a Hotel Owes Its Guests

As a paying guest, you're what the law calls an invitee — the highest level of protection Michigan premises law provides. A hotel owes invitees a duty to inspect the property for dangers and to fix or warn about hazards it knows about or reasonably should have discovered. That's a higher duty than what's owed to a trespasser or even a social guest. It covers the whole property you're invited to use: the lobby, hallways, stairwells, elevators, parking lots, pool deck, gym, and your room.

Common Hotel and Motel Injuries

• Slip, trip, and falls — wet lobby floors with no sign, spills, torn carpet, loose stair treads, poor lighting in stairwells and lots, and ice on unshoveled walkways.
• Pool and hot tub injuries — drownings, slip-and-falls on the deck, missing depth markers, broken drain covers, and unsupervised or unfenced pools.
• Bedbug and pest infestations — bites, infections, and property loss from an infestation the hotel knew or should have known about.
• Negligent security — assaults, robberies, and other crimes made possible by broken locks, dead cameras, no lighting, or a known pattern of crime the hotel ignored.
• Falling objects, defective furniture, and burns — collapsing beds, broken chairs, scalding tap water, and faulty heaters.
• Food-related illness from a hotel restaurant or breakfast buffet.

The "Open and Obvious" Doctrine — and Why It Matters Less Now

For years, Michigan hotels defended slip-and-fall claims with the open and obvious doctrine: if a hazard was so plain that an average person would have noticed and avoided it, the property owed no duty. That rule shut down a lot of legitimate claims.

That changed with the Michigan Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Kandil-Elsayed v. F & E Oil. The Court folded open-and-obvious into the comparative-fault analysis rather than treating it as an automatic bar. In plain terms: a hazard being obvious no longer automatically kills your case. Instead, it's weighed as part of how fault is divided between you and the property. That's a meaningful shift in favor of injured guests — but it also means the fault fight is where these cases are won or lost.

Proving a Hotel Injury Claim

To win, you generally have to show four things — the classic elements of negligence:

1. Duty — you were a guest the hotel was required to keep reasonably safe.
2. Breach — the hotel created a hazard, or knew (or should have known) about it and failed to fix or warn.
3. Causation — that hazard actually caused your injury.
4. Damages — you suffered real harm: medical bills, lost income, pain and suffering.

The hardest element is usually notice. Did the hotel know about the puddle, the broken lock, the bedbugs? Evidence like maintenance logs, prior guest complaints, inspection records, and past incident reports can prove the hotel knew and did nothing — which is why moving quickly to preserve that evidence matters.

Negligent Security: A Special Case

When a guest is assaulted or robbed, the question is whether the crime was foreseeable and whether reasonable security measures could have prevented it. A motel in an area with a documented history of crime that lets its exterior lighting and door locks fail may be liable when a guest is attacked. These cases turn on the property's crime history, its security decisions, and industry standards.

What to Do If You're Hurt at a Hotel

1. Get medical care immediately — and tell the provider it happened at the hotel so it's in the record.
2. Report it to management and insist on a written incident report. Get the report number and a copy if you can.
3. Photograph and video everything — the hazard, the scene, the lighting, your injuries, and your room number.
4. Preserve evidence — keep bitten bedding in a sealed bag, save the broken item, keep your reservation confirmation and receipts.
5. Get witness names — other guests and staff who saw what happened or the condition.
6. Ask about surveillance video — hotels often overwrite footage within days, so it must be requested fast.
7. Don't give a recorded statement to the hotel's insurer or sign a release before talking to a lawyer.

Deadlines and Damages

Michigan's statute of limitations for a premises injury is generally three years from the date of the injury. Wait too long and even a strong case is lost. If the injury also involved a vehicle on the property, no-fault PIP rules with their own shorter deadlines may come into play. You can recover economic damages (medical bills, lost wages) and non-economic damages (pain, suffering, disfigurement), reduced by any share of fault assigned to you under Michigan's comparative negligence rule.

The Bottom Line

A hotel that profits from your stay owes you a reasonably safe one. When it ignores a known hazard — a wet floor, a broken lock, a bedbug problem, an unguarded pool — and you get hurt, Michigan law is on your side, and the recent shift away from the harsh open-and-obvious rule has only strengthened guests' hands. Move fast to document and preserve evidence, and let us handle the property's insurer. The first conversation is free.

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