The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Missouri faces a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania man, after a hotel clerk gave him a wrong room key, leading him to enter the wrong room and bed a child. He was prosecuted with child molestation and was eventually got acquitted from the crime.
According to Chicago Tribune, Daniel Hughes sued Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Clayton for the said incident that caused him to lose his lucrative position. The said man from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania was found guilty of three counts of child molestation and one count of statutory sodomy in April 2014. Stemming the incident, a Ritz-Carlton hotel clerk gave him a wrong key for his room and crawled his way into the bed with a 9-year old girl.
Hughes was accused by the child victim of touching her sexually when he got into the bed on the said wrong hotel room, KMBC reported. However, Scott Rosenblum, his defense lawyer argued during the trial Hughes "only cuddled the girl, thinking he was in bed with a woman he had been out with earlier."
His lawyer also explains, Hughes was from a home visit in Conshohocken, attended for a business conference, and had been staying in Room 1619 at his previous hotel. Room 811 was supposed to be his room number at the Ritz. However, he "mixed up the room key numbers". After the key did not match in room 1611, he approached the front desk and obtained its key, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Hughes also said he could not remember his room number at the time. According to the suit filed in February 19, against Ritz-Carlton and Maritz, Wolff & Co., it stated that the "hotel staff failed to check his identification and the guest register, thus failing to give him the correct key."
His lawsuit also include that the mistake caused him to lose a lucrative position with Enterprise Leasing Co. In the year before the incident, Hughes earned $480,000 and likely would have earned more than $1 million in fiscal year 2015.
After the criminal trial, Hughes settled money ($50,000) for the child victim's lawsuit filed against him by her parents. Ritz-Carlton also gave undisclosed money settlement to the said parents.
