Opinion ID: 1360490
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: On July 1, 1986, the Hilton entered into a two-year contract with HCC whereby HCC agreed to provide cleaning services at the Hilton. Donna was employed by HCC and assigned to the Hilton. Pursuant to the agreement, certain areas of the hotel were to be cleaned at specific times. For example, the men's restroom on the ground floor of the hotel's Tapa Tower was to be cleaned by HCC employees daily between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. unless otherwise advised by the hotel. On March 27, 1988, while working her normal shift at the hotel, Donna was sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant in the Tapa Tower men's restroom. [1] Plaintiffs thereafter filed a complaint against Defendants alleging, inter alia, that: (1) Defendants knew or should have known that requiring Donna's services late at night in a high crime area where other attacks had occurred put her at risk; (2) Defendants' failure to exercise ordinary care was a legal cause of her physical, emotional, and economic injuries; and (3) Robert suffered loss of consortium. Defendants filed a motion for summary judgment on April 5, 1989. The circuit court granted and denied the motion in part. The court ruled, inter alia, that Donna was not: (1) a guest of the Hilton, and, therefore, there was no special guest-innkeeper relationship between them; and (2) an employee of the hotel as defined in Hawai`i Revised Statutes (HRS) chapter 386. The court allowed Donna and Robert an additional sixty days from the date of the order to conduct further discovery as to the existence of another special relationship that would give rise to a duty on the part of the hotel to protect Donna against criminal acts by third parties. On August 7, 1989, Defendants filed a second motion for summary judgment and argued that no special relationship existed between the hotel and either the unknown assailant or Donna. The circuit court denied Defendants' motion on the basis that Plaintiffs had a pending motion to compel discovery. However, the circuit court eventually denied Plaintiffs' motion to compel. Thus, on March 2, 1990, Defendants filed a third motion for summary judgment on all counts. Defendants again argued that the hotel did not have a special relationship with Donna. Plaintiffs filed a memorandum in opposition, as well as a supplemental exhibit, which consisted of incident reports from the hotel's security department documenting alleged criminal acts that had occurred on the premises prior to March 27, 1988. The reports included: (1) a March 11, 1988, domestic dispute between non-guests; (2) an armed robbery in a guest room of the hotel's Tapa Tower on March 20, 1988, at 8:30 p.m.; (3) a beating and robbery in the hotel parking lot on April 4, 1984, at 9:30 p.m.; (4) a robbery and assault in the hotel's Rainbow Tower on August 22, 1984, at 8:00 p.m.; (5) a terroristic threatening in a hotel hallway on April 8, 1984, at 8:15 a.m.; and (6) an armed robbery in the Hilton parking lot on March 30, 1984 at 10:25 p.m. [2] The circuit court granted Defendants' motion for summary judgment on September 10, 1990, concluding, on the record before it, that Defendants owed no duty to Donna. Plaintiffs timely appealed.