How can I sue/take legal action against hotel for water leak which damaged my goods? Money Claim?

FrankFalcon

Sorry, should have said...I am self employed and the hotel was paid for by the company I was subcontracting to.  Also, the laptop is personal and used just for watching movies etc.  I bought the laptop years ago and paid cash and I genuinely can't remember where from.  Maybe PC world.

lincroft1710

So if the company paid for the hotel, rather than you paid and they reimbursed you, you effectively had no contract with the hotel. It probably doesn't work the same with hotels and guests, but if you had bought a (say) watch from a retailer and given it as a gift to a friend, then if the watch stopped working, the friend couldn't make a claim against the retailer, you would have to. Also as you have no idea of the age or cost of the laptop or its spec, it is going to very difficult to put a current value on it.

Okell

But any claim the OP has would have nothing to do with any contractual relationship with the hotel would it, so it doesn't matter who paid for the room?

Any claim the OP has would be for negligence, wouldn't it?

RefluentBeans

Okell said:

But any claim the OP has would have nothing to do with any contractual relationship with the hotel would it, so it doesn't matter who paid for the room?

Any claim the OP has would be for negligence, wouldn't it?

Agree. But I think the stumbling block is the lack of receipt for the laptop. An entry level Intel Pentium 4GB RAM, 128GB hard drive could easily sit in the same shell as an Intel Core i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD. But these would be on the opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of price! 

It’s one of those where it’s the balance of probabilities on how much to pay out. How much should the hotel pay - enough to replace for new? Like for like? If like for like - then a 5 year old laptop doesn’t fetch much at all. 

Alas, if the OP attempted to take this to court I feel this would have the same issue - hard to prove losses when you don’t know what the laptop actually was. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

lincroft1710 said:

you effectively had no contract with the hotel. It probably doesn't work the same with hotels and guests, but if you had bought a (say) watch from a retailer and given it as a gift to a friend, then if the watch stopped working, the friend couldn't make a claim against the retailer, you would have to. 

This is one of those myths of the forum  

Under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 third parties can have rights to enforce terms of the contract, with some caveats.

The OP would presumably be named as the person staying in the room so it's a question of what, if any, third party rights were excluded as part of the terms of the booking contract. 

Okell said:

Any claim the OP has would be for negligence, wouldn't it?

I assume that would be the case but it would down to OP to show, at least on the balance of probability, and I doubt the receptionist muttering about it happening frequently isn't going to help unless they are willing to officially be part of the claim. 

Not an area I know a lot about but you often see signs in car parks about no liability for loss/damage, I would assume a hotel would include the same in their terms, except where they may not, such as negligence which goes back to the above about proof.

OP sorry if I missed it but I don't think you said if this was a chain or not? If it was a chain you'd probably be better off applying to the goodwill of head office with a polite letter in the post.  

As others mention the value may not be as high as you expect, £500-£1200 is a quite a big range for original purchase price, on the plus side from your point of view there may not be many of such a laptop around so prices on the likes of eBay may be higher than others anticipate but without know knowing the spec it's difficult for you to put a figure on the loss. 

I assume even without being able to turn it on there are ways to determine the spec if someone independently inspected the inside of the laptop but that's going to cost and I can't see you would have a claim for that cost as it isn't the hotels fault you don't know the specs   

Grumpy_chap

Although there may not be a direct contractual link between the OP and the hotel (because of the hotel being booked by a company), the hotel would still owe a duty of care to the OP.  There must be established precedent for this type of thing given the high number of business travellers staying in hotels where the bill is settled directly via a corporate account.  Others may be able to reference how that precedent might be set.

However, I am not sure in this case that there is much of a claim in any case.

FrankFalcon said:

I can't prove the specs of the machine because it won't switch on...Because it was water damaged.
this laptop would have been in the range of £500  and £1200 5 years ago and I even offered to accept £300 or asked them to replace the laptop themselves. 
I can't provide a receipt for the laptop from 5 years ago and can't prove the actual specifications...even though the pictures of the laptop show the make and model on the front cover. 

FrankFalcon said:

I am self employed and the hotel was paid for by the company I was subcontracting to.
I bought the laptop years ago and paid cash and I genuinely can't remember where from.  Maybe PC world.

So, there is a laptop that cost between £500 and £1,200 some years ago, probably 5 years ago.

What is the life of a laptop?  Many people would say 5 years is about the expectation for life of a laptop in any case.  If so, the residual value would be NIL, or negligible at best.

I certainly would not expect to pay £300 for a second hand 5yo laptop that may have only cost £500 to start with. 
(I wish that were the case as my wife want a new laptop and the old one was about £500 about 5 years ago.  If we could get £300 for it, that would be great - in reality, the old laptop has no value.  I am happy for any forum members to point me in the direction where I can sell the old laptop for a value that makes it worth the effort.)

Even a £1,200 laptop at 5 yo probably has only a small residual value.  The higher specification means the laptop is faster and stores more, but does not necessarily link to longer life expectancy.

Maybe the best thing for the OP to do would be to appeal to the hotel's better nature for a "goodwill" gesture on the basis that the water should not have leaked and it has caused harm / inconvenience to the OP (damaged the laptop).  Perhaps hope for a notional £50, or maybe a free night accommodation or a meal in the hotel's restaurant.  These latter solutions might be far easier for the hotel to facilitate because they have a value to the OP far greater than the cost to the venue.

If this were me, I'd be annoyed but take the hit on the 5 yo laptop - although I might investigate whether an easy repair is possible, perhaps if it was juts a new PSU or other "plug in" internal component.  My greater concern would be recovering my data from the drive.

DullGreyGuy

In the absence of proof the assumption would be that its the lower end model... when you consider you are talking about its second hand value if it was originally £500 or £550 is not going to make a material difference in what the value of the laptop is now. Looking on eBay, a working basic laptop released in 5-6 years ago is going for circa £70-£90 and there is a fair range of processors, ram, HDDs etc in that price range

lincroft1710

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

lincroft1710 said:

you effectively had no contract with the hotel. It probably doesn't work the same with hotels and guests, but if you had bought a (say) watch from a retailer and given it as a gift to a friend, then if the watch stopped working, the friend couldn't make a claim against the retailer, you would have to. 

This is one of those myths of the forum  

Under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 third parties can have rights to enforce terms of the contract, with some caveats.

The OP would presumably be named as the person staying in the room so it's a question of what, if any, third party rights were excluded as part of the terms of the booking contract. 

Okell said:

Any claim the OP has would be for negligence, wouldn't it?

I assume that would be the case but it would down to OP to show, at least on the balance of probability, and I doubt the receptionist muttering about it happening frequently isn't going to help unless they are willing to officially be part of the claim. 

Not an area I know a lot about but you often see signs in car parks about no liability for loss/damage, I would assume a hotel would include the same in their terms, except where they may not, such as negligence which goes back to the above about proof.

OP sorry if I missed it but I don't think you said if this was a chain or not? If it was a chain you'd probably be better off applying to the goodwill of head office with a polite letter in the post.  

As others mention the value may not be as high as you expect, £500-£1200 is a quite a big range for original purchase price, on the plus side from your point of view there may not be many of such a laptop around so prices on the likes of eBay may be higher than others anticipate but without know knowing the spec it's difficult for you to put a figure on the loss. 

I assume even without being able to turn it on there are ways to determine the spec if someone independently inspected the inside of the laptop but that's going to cost and I can't see you would have a claim for that cost as it isn't the hotels fault you don't know the specs   

If you actually read the 1999 Act it would appear that the 3rd party has to be named in the contract or at least it is intended they should be part of the contract. So it is not really a "myth of the forum" that 3rd parties are not part of a contract.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

lincroft1710 said:

If you actually read the 1999 Act it would appear that the 3rd party has to be named in the contract or at least it is intended they should be part of the contract. So it is not really a "myth of the forum" that 3rd parties are not part of a contract.

That would be one of the caveats, another would be whether any rights to third parties have been excluded.

However if you buy your watch for your friend online and have it sent to them directly they would be named as part of the contract. Or in a similar vein if you booked a hotel room for someone and named them as the guest. 

The basic "only the purchaser can pursue consumer rights" is a myth of the forum  

RefluentBeans

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

lincroft1710 said:

If you actually read the 1999 Act it would appear that the 3rd party has to be named in the contract or at least it is intended they should be part of the contract. So it is not really a "myth of the forum" that 3rd parties are not part of a contract.

That would be one of the caveats, another would be whether any rights to third parties have been excluded.

However if you buy your watch for your friend online and have it sent to them directly they would be named as part of the contract. Or in a similar vein if you booked a hotel room for someone and named them as the guest. 

The basic "only the purchaser can pursue consumer rights" is a myth of the forum  

I think the argument that people were making were that consumer rights wouldn’t apply as the hotel was bought for business, so is likely considered a B2B contract. 

Regardless, without proof of what was actually damaged the claim can’t go anywhere really, and would have an extremely up hill battle in court, as even OP seems confused in how much the laptop was worth brand new let alone a deprecated value. Whilst they could of course goodwill it - attempting to launch a consumer rights argument could open up a can of worms of questions whether it is or isn’t eligible from CCR or not.