A hotel incident report might consist of a few sentences. It is a record of the guest’s name, describes a disturbance that occurred, names the respondent employees, and records the time the management was informed.

As an attorney, that report may raise more questions than it can answer. Who was in charge of supervising the employees in question? Was surveillance footage preserved? The facility was following its own policies. Do you know of any prior interactions which were not documented?

These issues illustrate why litigation involving hospitality often demands an examination of normal business records before witness testimony commences.

Begin with the documents that were created in normal operation

Records are kept by hospitality businesses for scheduling guest services, training for staff and security, management and more. Although they weren’t made to aid in litigation, they can help establish how a property functioned in the aftermath of an incident.

An expert witness in Hospitality may review staffing schedules and operating procedures, employee education documents, security logs and recordings of surveillance to determine the duties assigned to different personnel. Written policies may demand that a manager respond to an employee who reports an intoxicated client.

The investigation should establish whether the manager was actually working and if the report was distributed, and what response the evidence reveals. The objective is to assess the actual activities rather than inferring that the written procedure was implemented or not.

The interpretation of restaurant records is different

Restaurant investigations pose challenges since employees are split between the preparation of beverages, food service, customer requests, and the management of dining rooms. A qualified witness in the restaurant industry will be able to clarify how the decisions of employees are affected by these responsibilities.

Imagine a situation in which the client purchased alcohol from the bar and was moved to a table. The bar receipt can document the initial order, while dining-room records will show the subsequent orders.

However, those records might not establish what the table server was aware of about the previous service. Reviewing all the data such as the server’s assignments and times of transactions as well as management notes and statements from employees will help clarify the order of events. The key difference is: the evidence of alcohol consumption is not automatically evidence that staff recognized intoxication.

Casino Investigations May Require Different Records

Casinos operate beverage programs that differ significantly from the standard restaurant service. Additional sources of information are complimentary drinks as well as mobile cocktail servers, and gaming floor supervisors.

A casino expert witness can review beverage staffing, security footage and surveillance. They can also look over protocols for employee communication. When beverages are provided as a complimentary service, the receipts from sales traditionally are insufficient.

In those instances the investigation might rely on surveillance data, employee observations, service records, and procedure for the property’s documentation. Experts must identify the limitations of evidence, instead of accepting insufficient records as proof.

Conserve the Evidence before It becomes unavailable

One practical concern when it comes to hospitality litigation is the protection of time-sensitive records. Surveillance systems can keep records for only a short time. The information about employee schedules, internal communications and other information as well as incident documentation could be stored by various departments or by different systems. Attorneys should be able to spot potentially relevant records early and take the appropriate steps in order to preserve these records.

It’s dependent on what the claim is. The scope of an investigation will be contingent on the allegations. You can determine relevant records through a targeted review, without being required to assume that every department was involved.

Making sense of paperwork is much easier when you have operational experience

Preston Rideout has worked in hospitality since 1996, with experience in bartending, nightclub management, and multi-unit beverage operations. Rideout Hospitality Consulting was established in the year 2010 and has offered guidance to hotels, restaurants and resort operators throughout the United States.

Expert witness testimony on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants has covered matters that involved resorts, casinos and restaurants as well as hotels. It’s useful to have some experience in hospitality management when interpreting documents that seem straightforward to those who are not experienced in the field.

A list of staffing plans, for example identifies those assigned to work. The service model and the operational environment of a building is necessary to determine whether these assignments offer adequate supervision.

A Stronger Case Begins With Simpler Questions

An early expert review will help lawyers distinguish between documented facts and unresolved questions. It can identify records that are worth requesting and clarify the operational terminology used in depositions.

Not all discrepancies are indicative of an operational failure. There isn’t a single policy that proves that the correct procedure was adhered to.

It is the importance of an expert’s analysis which demonstrates these distinctions using established business practices and pertinent evidence. Understanding the business before asking employees to answer questions in a hospitality case can help attorneys prepare a case with a an unbiased and trustworthy examination.