If a company is told “your product has this risk that could be minimized by doing [X]” and they don’t do [X], they’re probably going to be found negligent. The company that settled feels less good about their defense than you - a detached and much less informed third party. That should tell you something.
You don't know this. It's costing them $50m. That's a small amount for them to get to move on instead of having to publicly fight victims. That's never a good look. They could have felt they had a 100% chance to win and it would still make sense for them to settle.
The guy who famously lectured people not to second guess someone who was paid $4 million to do something is now questioning the theory of liability and litigation strategy of an attorney team that just compelled MGM to enter a 9 digit settlement, all while telling a bunch of lawyers how the lawsuit should have proceeded. Love it.
As I said before, I get why the attorneys did it. They saw a payday. Victims want someone to blame. MGM wants it to go away. I understand why the lawsuit and the settlement happened. Doesn't make it any less right.
Within reason, yes. I don't think planning for something that's never happened before falls under within reason.
ah yes, who could have foreseen that a hotel with tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in cash sitting around would have to consider one of its patrons committing an armed assault?
They should go through every single piece of baggage before someone takes it to their room. They should have bulletproof glass that can't be broken open. They should have a force field around their building that doesn't allow bullets to leave the area. Find me a hotel that does that and then I'll blame the MGM for not doing it.
No. I don't think they should be required to keep track of how many bags each of their 3500 guests (actually much more than that bc there's normally more than 1 person per room) brings in over multiple days.
Do you think they should have a time frame for checking the rooms, say, an amount of time they allow a do not disturb sign on the door? If so, how long?
Bo Pelinis if you want to change the industry standard due to this event, I'm ok with that. Holding them responsible for not counting bags in 2017 when no other hotel on the planet does that doesn't seem right to me.
It’s good that victims got compensation. This, and time, are the only things that can begin to mend families torn apart and injuries that people will have to live with forever. It’s good that MGM avoids discovery on this. $800m with the vast majority coming from insurance is a drop in the bucket for them. They’ve owned it when they may or may not be the most liable party here and now the attention turns to the parties that have failed the American people; gun manufacturers, the NRA, and our legislators.
Sure. There's no special security measures in the regular elevators so I don't see the difference other than convenience.
I spent a week in an extended stay type place, where the room next door had a bag hanging from the door with diapers and a children's cold medicine, along with the do not disturb tag almost the entire week, with no signs of anyone coming or going. My wife grew increasingly worried that something had happened and someone was in there either sick or dead, with a baby. She complained enough that management finally opened the door and went in, nobody was in there. I was really surprised at how serious they take those do not disturb tags.
Should a hotel have a disaster response protocol in place? Should that protocol anticipate an active shooter situation?
I think a staff entry every 48 hours is fair. I also think that the property should be able to decide if they enforce something like that.
It's sad to say this, but yea they probably do today. idk what that would entail other than going on the mic and telling everyone to stay in their rooms but they should have some type of process in place.
So basically people should be able to come and go as they please with no oversight at all by the hotel staff on number of bags, contents of bags (or person), length of stay and what's happening in their rooms, or how they allow customers to use staff facilities?
Basically. That's how it's done at every hotel in the world. Do you feel like the entire industry should change bc one nutjob turned a room into a hunting stand?
What places have changed since mass casualty events have been the norm? Schools? Stadiums? Courthouses? Airlines? Disney even has metal detectors and bag searches. Let's be real without the line of questioning. It's not that hotels can't make people safer or prevent something like this. It's that they choose not to because it's a pain in the ass and bad for business. There's very likely a risk assessment that lays all this out and they probably implemented some of it that was relatively easy and cheap and left anything else (not necessarily out of industry standard on it all) to later because who could have seen this coming says only country where it happens regularly.
I tracked it down, here are the causes of action against MGM The California suits accuse MGM of not having adequate security policies, not properly training staff, not properly surveilling the premises, and failing to respond quickly when security guard Jesus Campos was shot. The suit alleges that Paddock's VIP status as a high-stakes gambler gave him access to a service elevator at the Mandalay Bay, which he used to stockpile weapons and ammunition in the days before the shooting. The suits filed in Nevada argue that MGM assisted Paddock in transporting his arsenal by giving him access to a service elevator not open to the public, and that the Mandalay Bay failed to adequately monitor the hotel premises, discover his weapons, have gunshot detection devices in hotel rooms, or have adequate procedures to handle an active shooter situation.
Like I said earlier, if you want to change the industry standard bc of this event, I'm not opposed to it. I really don't care about that part. I'm just not a fan of holding them to a standard that no hotel was meeting in 2017.
I don't get the elevator part. What difference does it make if the bellhop used the service or regular elevator? Gunshot detection in hotel rooms? Does any hotel have that? Honest question.
An active shooter mass casualty event? Probably all of them if they were doing their due diligence at all.
Whether or not they planned for it isn’t the issue. The issue is whether or not they were warned about it.
I'm sure they were. They get warned about all kinds of shit. They can't plan for everything they are warned of.
I assume the theory is he was able to evade hotel security by using the staff elevator. I don't know about the gunshot detection thing.
I’m going to be obtuse for a minute. I’m a data guy. The data going back 25 years in the US says this is a 1-in-27 Billion occurrence based on number of rooms, average occupancy, and only going back 25 years. I think some things can and should be done as a deterrent, like room check policies. At the same time, the data says the system is not very broken in regard to hotel SOP.