Sidney Raisnick Case Summary
It was seemingly a normal quiet night on the day of March 12th 2011, until Virginia Rasnick attempted to phone her husband several times with no response. Sidney Rasnick, while on a work assignment in Jesup Georgia, checked into a motel on March 6th 2011. The hotel was owned by Krishna Hospitality INC. Throughout the work trip for all 6 days he was staying there, her husband had a schedule of always making several calls a day to her, and always one at night before he went to bed. So when he didn’t answer the phone that night she knew something was wrong. Her husband Sidney Rasnik, had a history of heart problems and she was growing more and more worried after calling five more times with no response. Desperate she asked one of the hotel operators that answered the phone to check on her husband. She stated that she was “very worried about her husband” and that he had been on medication. The man on the phone told her that he knew who he was and that he was resting and she was disturbing him. She tried to argue this claim but he hung up. She ended up calling the hotel 8 more times, asking for
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somebody to do something and then eventually they stopped answering her calls all together. Surely someone saw how concerned she was and went to check on him and found that he was just asleep. She finally gave up and went to bed. The next morning a housekeeper opened the door and found him lying on the floor. An ambulance was summoned and he was taken to a nearby hospital where he died shortly after. An autopsy showed that if he had received medical treatment on the evening the night before he would of defiantly survived. He had died from untreated coronary artery disease coupled with an enlargement of his heart. Furious and grief ridden his wife decided to sue the hotel under a negligence allegation, to prove that it was the hotels fault her husband had died. If they had just showed reasonable care to their customers he would still be alive. She argued, Krishna had
Breached the duty contemplated by Section 314A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts: "A common carrier is under a duty to its passengers to take reasonable action and to give them first aid after it knows or has reason to know that they are ill or injured, and to care for them until they can be cared for by others.” Krishna retaliated with a movement for summary judgment, arguing that Georgia law imposed no duty on it to investigate Sidney Rasnick's condition and render or summon medical aid, if needed. That a person has no duty to rescue another from a dangerous situation that the first person has not created and that Sidney Rasnick's situation was created by his own health, medical, and physical condition. And because it wasn’t the hotel that placed Sidney Rasnick in his incapacitated condition, it argued that it had no legal duty to rescue him from that condition. In order to sue someone for negligence in Georgia you have to be able to prove that the standard of conduct created by the law to protect others was intentionally broken.
The whole basis for her allegation was that Krishna had a legal obligation to act in order to protect her husband from harm, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise as it was not the hotels fault that he had a medical condition. She tried to say that there was an exception to this rule because she felt that her husband and the hotel had a “special relationship” as shown in Section 314A “when some special relationship exists between partied social policies must justify the imposition of a duty to assist or rescue one in peril.” But Krishna just argued back that that restatement hasn’t been adopted by Georgia’s common law. Virginia was not compensated in any way and in her eyes justice was never
served. I am aware that the law that cost Virginia to lose is a very important one that protects the hotel from many situations that could arise and also protects the privacy of its customers. Let’s say that an angry woman could call and check to see if her husband was in a hotel room with another woman, if hotels allowed that it would certainly cost them business. I do however think that this wasn’t so much a law thing as it was a moral duty for Krishna to do what Virginia had asked. She was concerned for his wellbeing and expressed that to the employees who seemed to just brush her off. That doesn’t sound like very good customer service to me, and sounds really disheartening. I feel like it makes Krishna look really bad and I feel like they probably lost customers when this case was made public. I know that if I had a loved one staying at a hotel and I was worried about their safety and the hotel refused to even acknowledge my requests I’d be very upset. But I guess when it comes down to it they didn’t break the law. I do believe that they should have told Virginia that this was not allowed and if she was that worried she should call 911. At least then she would have known that no one was going to check on her husband at all, ever, and would have got someone who could. The laws of the Hospitality industry are around for good reason, but considering Sidney would have survived if someone just took the time to care about the situation, a man’s life could have been saved.
somebody to do something and then eventually they stopped answering her calls all together. Surely someone saw how concerned she was and went to check on him and found that he was just asleep. She finally gave up and went to bed. The next morning a housekeeper opened the door and found him lying on the floor. An ambulance was summoned and he was taken to a nearby hospital where he died shortly after. An autopsy showed that if he had received medical treatment on the evening the night before he would of defiantly survived. He had died from untreated coronary artery disease coupled with an enlargement of his heart. Furious and grief ridden his wife decided to sue the hotel under a negligence allegation, to prove that it was the hotels fault her husband had died. If they had just showed reasonable care to their customers he would still be alive. She argued, Krishna had
Breached the duty contemplated by Section 314A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts: "A common carrier is under a duty to its passengers to take reasonable action and to give them first aid after it knows or has reason to know that they are ill or injured, and to care for them until they can be cared for by others.” Krishna retaliated with a movement for summary judgment, arguing that Georgia law imposed no duty on it to investigate Sidney Rasnick's condition and render or summon medical aid, if needed. That a person has no duty to rescue another from a dangerous situation that the first person has not created and that Sidney Rasnick's situation was created by his own health, medical, and physical condition. And because it wasn’t the hotel that placed Sidney Rasnick in his incapacitated condition, it argued that it had no legal duty to rescue him from that condition. In order to sue someone for negligence in Georgia you have to be able to prove that the standard of conduct created by the law to protect others was intentionally broken.
The whole basis for her allegation was that Krishna had a legal obligation to act in order to protect her husband from harm, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise as it was not the hotels fault that he had a medical condition. She tried to say that there was an exception to this rule because she felt that her husband and the hotel had a “special relationship” as shown in Section 314A “when some special relationship exists between partied social policies must justify the imposition of a duty to assist or rescue one in peril.” But Krishna just argued back that that restatement hasn’t been adopted by Georgia’s common law. Virginia was not compensated in any way and in her eyes justice was never
served. I am aware that the law that cost Virginia to lose is a very important one that protects the hotel from many situations that could arise and also protects the privacy of its customers. Let’s say that an angry woman could call and check to see if her husband was in a hotel room with another woman, if hotels allowed that it would certainly cost them business. I do however think that this wasn’t so much a law thing as it was a moral duty for Krishna to do what Virginia had asked. She was concerned for his wellbeing and expressed that to the employees who seemed to just brush her off. That doesn’t sound like very good customer service to me, and sounds really disheartening. I feel like it makes Krishna look really bad and I feel like they probably lost customers when this case was made public. I know that if I had a loved one staying at a hotel and I was worried about their safety and the hotel refused to even acknowledge my requests I’d be very upset. But I guess when it comes down to it they didn’t break the law. I do believe that they should have told Virginia that this was not allowed and if she was that worried she should call 911. At least then she would have known that no one was going to check on her husband at all, ever, and would have got someone who could. The laws of the Hospitality industry are around for good reason, but considering Sidney would have survived if someone just took the time to care about the situation, a man’s life could have been saved.