Civil trial in drunken wrong-room incident at Ritz slated for August

A posh Clayton hotel will get its turn to defend its actions in the headline-grabbing case of a man who got into bed with a child in what he thought was his hotel room in 2011.

The criminal trial of Daniel Hughes wrapped up last week in St. Louis County Circuit Court, with the Pennsylvania man acquitted by a jury of all charges, including child molestation and statutory sodomy. In St. Louis on business in 2011, he drunkenly entered what he thought was the room he was sharing with a coworker at the Ritz-Carlton, using a key provided by the front desk. Once inside, he touched the female he found sleeping in the bed — a 9-year-old girl whom Hughes said he mistook for a consenting adult who expected his presence.

In that matter, all parties agreed that the Ritz provided Hughes with the key to the room where the child was sleeping, rather than to his own room. The hotel clerk verified that Hughes was registered at the hotel but gave him the key he asked for, not the key to the room where he was actually staying. The girl and her parents are suing the hotel.

Previous defendants also included in the suit — Hughes, his employer at the time of the incident, and the Ritz’s parent company — have been dropped. The family’s attorney, Maurice B. Graham at Gray Ritter & Graham in St. Louis, would only say those parties had been dropped for “various strategic reasons.”

With Hughes not a party to the civil suit, it’s unclear what effect, if any, his acquittal will have on the civil suit other than procedurally.

“I think if anything, it points out that the Ritz made the final mistake here that resulted in this tragedy,” Graham said.

Joseph R. Swift at Brown & James in St. Louis and Robert W. Foster Jr. and Sarah T. Eibling at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough in Columbia, S.C., are representing the hotel. They did not return calls seeking comment.

In an April motion seeking to move the trial from May to its current scheduled date in August, attorneys for the Ritz wrote that they had not yet been able to depose Hughes or the girl because of the pending criminal matter.

Hughes’ attorney in the criminal trial, Scott Rosenblum, repeatedly noted in court that the family is seeking more than $5 million from the Ritz in the civil suit. Graham would not confirm that figure, saying only that they would be happy to let the jury decide what fair and reasonable damages would be.

According to the defense motion, the plaintiff’s life care expert has stated that the girl will require from $1 million to $3 million in medical care over the course of her life, including five medications daily, years of psychiatric care and the possibility of outpatient treatment for substance abuse. The defense’s expert, meanwhile, had found that six months of therapy would likely be sufficient.

The case, Jane Doe et al. v. The Ritz-Carlton Co., 11SL-CC01159, is scheduled for trial beginning Aug. 4 before Judge Richard C. Bresnahan in St. Louis County Circuit Court.