This defendant's in hot water.

The First Department denied a motion to dismiss in an action seeking damages for injuries allegedly suffered when a glass shower door fell on plaintiff at defendant's hotel, in Higgins-Barber v. Raffles, which was decided on November 20, 2007.

The court rejected defendants' argument that they cannot be held liable unless they had notice of the alleged defect in the shower door in plaintiff's particular room. The court said that, even if defendants never received any complaints about this particular shower door, or if they regularly inspected it and found no problems, there still would be issues of fact bearing on notice, including the adequacy of defendants' inspection and maintenance procedures. The court pointed to defendants' acknowledgment that there had been at least 22 similar incidents involving identical shower doors in other rooms going back 10 years, and to defendants' failure to adduce evidence in their initial moving papers as to the proper inspection and maintenance procedures for shower doors.

The court further said that defendants' argument that the prior incidents are statistically insignificant given that the hotel has over 500 rooms was effectively countered by plaintiff's expert's affidavit which specified defects in the assembly of an identical shower door, and by defendants' own witness's testimony that, beginning 10 months before plaintiff's accident, the hotel had begun replacing all the shower doors with shower curtains.