Marriott Backs Down From Claim That Woman To Blame For Her Own Rape (Sort Of)

After what the Hartford Courant calls “days of backlash” of which FPN is proud to be a part (see here and here),

A Marriott hotel abandoned a defense Monday in a lawsuit brought by a Connecticut woman raped at gunpoint in a Stamford garage in front of her young children — that she was careless and partially at fault.

The woman also accused Marriott in June of indirectly exposing her and her children’s identity by seeking subpoenas for the depositions of her Pilates instructor, friends and tennis partners, a house cleaner and a baby sitter.

Attorneys needed to determine the effect of the crime on the victim, said Marriott attorney Donald Derrico, noting that the subpoenas haven’t been issued. The hotel will decide whom to subpoena on a case-by-case basis, he said.

“Her name was never, ever, ever disclosed to anyone,” Derrico said.

Well no, it didn’t have to be, no doubt the people involved could figure it out for themselves.

The defense claim was made before attorneys finished taking the victim’s deposition, Derrico said, “so as not to waive a potential defense.” He said that Marriott officials asked his law firm to withdraw the claim in July, but that his associate had not done so because his mother died.

The my associate’s Mom died excuse?  Really?

It gets better.  The Stamford Advocate reports that,

An attorney for the Marriott Hotel & Spa in Stamford said it is not responsible for a lawsuit’s defense that a local woman’s negligence led to her rape in the hotel’s garage in 2006 and had requested the claim be withdrawn weeks ago.

“From its inception, the legal case involving this tragic incident has been handled by the insurance company and its lawyers under the terms of the hotel’s insurance policy, as is customary where an insurance company bears the risk of loss,” said Stamford attorney Marc Kurzman in a statement from the hotel. “Interestingly enough, when we recently learned of this defense we requested that it be withdrawn.”

Kurzman said the Stamford Marriott staff are “surprised and distressed” by The Advocate’s coverage of the lawsuit filed by the victim. He said there is a “mistaken belief that the Marriott’s ownership and management was somehow responsible for the ‘blame the victim’ defense asserted in the legal papers.”

Mistaken belief?  Um, that’s nice that you requested that it be withdrawn but let’s use this analogy–if I go to my health insurance company and tell them their coverage sucks and it costs too much and I’m going to go to another company, they are going to be rolling on the floor laughing and wishing me the best of luck.  But I’m betting that Marriott’s business is a fair chunk of change for any insurance company (interesting that no one seems to be mentioning the insurance company’s name) and maybe possibly you could have demanded it be withdrawn and taken swift action when it came to light that it hadn’t been.

And then, without explanations, excuses, or other qualifiers, you could apologize to this woman and settle the case quietly and to her  satisfaction.  And after all this damned ruckus, it better be a very large settlement.