Marriott Claims Woman Was Negligent In Her Own Rape
There are a couple of rules of corporate communications that the Marriott hotel chain don't seem to understand. First: Never let lawyers do public relations. Second: If you do something stupid, people will tell 2 million of their closest friends on the Internet.
The latest example of poor PR comes from the lawyers of the Marriott hotel in Stamford, Connecticut. In 2006, a woman was raped in the hotel parking lot in front of her children by a man armed with a gun. In 2008, she filed suit against the hotel, alleging negligence because the man, since convicted and sentenced to 20 years, had been hanging around the parking lot for days. In their zeal to defend this $15,000 lawsuit, attorneys for Marriott have claimed that the woman failed to properly "mitigate their damages." In other words, it's at least partly her fault she got raped.
The result is an entirely predictable and avoidable storm of negative publicity (more, and more). There may have been nothing the hotel could reasonably have done to avoid the attack. However, by blaming the victim and issuing subpoenas to her friends, family, the kind babysitter, and even her tennis partners, and in so doing outing her as the victim, they have painted themselves as insensitive, misogynistic, and clueless about the power of the Internet.
Already suffering from the recession and negative publicity stemming from Mormon support for Proposition 8 in California, Marriott stands as a lesson on how not to manage corporate PR in a world of instant mass communication.
Email
Print
Comment
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Comments
"attorneys for Marriott have
"attorneys for Marriott have claimed that the woman failed to properly "mitigate their damages." In other words, it's at least partly her fault she got raped.
This is incorrect. That is not what failure to mitigate damages means.
Likewise, I'm guessing that this argument was made in court filings, not in a press release. If you would like to hire a PR person to do your legal work go ahead. Legal filings are not PR work.
Your article is just another example of the press not understanding the legal system and making wildly inaccurate accusations based on complete ignorance of our judicial system.
I disagree
The point of the article is that legal documents don't exist in a vacuum any more. Companies, and their lawyers, need to look at the bigger picture and how their actions and words will be interpreted by a lay audience. The world where a legal filing is only ever read by the other side has gone, now if a lawyer says or does anything that can be spun negatively it will be. This was a $15,000 nuisance suit and the take no prisoners approach of throwing subpoenas around has cost them way more in negative news than settling it would have.
You really think they only
You really think they only claimed 15000? that barely will pay for her attorneys fees. And who would take that case on contingency.
I have a feeling its 15000 actual damages, and hundreds of thousands more in punitive damages.
I agree it was a stupid move to announce this stuff to the public, but god damn. How many things does the media leave out? Don't you editors have some sort of pride in your work?
victim-blaming
No you missed the point and so did the lawyers when they outed the woman as the victim and failed to protect her privacy as they are required to do. I wouldn't be surprised if their next stunning move was to counter-sue the woman for contibuting to the deliquincy of minors by engaging in sex acts in front of minor children. What the article was trying to point out was how marriot is shooting themselves in the foot by being pricks and refusing to appologise or just even not fight the suit since they were grossly negligent.
I do agree with you !! I was
I do agree with you !! I was robbed inside the breakfast room in the Frankfurt Marriot ( my wife´s purse with everything including passports). The security insinuate that she could had left the purse in the room and, after see the robbery in the backup images of the security cameras said that she left the purse unatemded. They did nothing to help us. We were leaving to France that day, but all documents were in the purse. I have complained but nothing was done. I will never be back to a Marriot hotel in the world and I always tell to my friends to do the same.