Al-Najar & Ors v The Cumberland Hotel (London) Ltd

A hotel proprietor may owe guests a duty to take reasonable care to protect them against injury caused by criminal acts of third parties. The duty arises from the hotel’s assumption of responsibility to protect its guests. The criminal act will not ordinarily break the chain of causation where the duty is specifically concerned with preventing such conduct. The particular criminal attack must nevertheless be reasonably foreseeable. The duty requires reasonable care, not an absolute guarantee of safety. In assessing breach, the court considers the circumstances as a whole, including the likelihood and seriousness of the risk, existing security arrangements and relevant industry practice. A very low likelihood of attack may justify proportionate security measures rather than additional precautions which might have prevented the particular attack.

Guests of The Cumberland Hotel (London) Ltd suffered serious injuries when Philip Spence entered the hotel, reached their rooms and attacked them with a hammer while stealing property. The claimants alleged that the hotel failed to take reasonable steps to prevent access by criminals, including better lift access control, additional patrols, CCTV, door alarms and more active reception security.

The trial concerned liability and contributory negligence in respect of the claims by the three direct victims. The central questions were whether the hotel owed a duty to protect guests from third-party criminal acts, whether the attack was foreseeable, whether the hotel’s precautions were reasonable, whether causation was established, and whether the attack broke the chain of causation.

1. Duty of care. The hotel owed its guests a duty to take reasonable care to protect them against injury caused by the criminal acts of third parties. The duty arose because the hotel invited guests to stay and thereby assumed responsibility for their protection. The court applied the assumption-of-responsibility approach identified in Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2018] UKSC 4, rather than treating the case as requiring a free-standing application of the threefold test in Caparo Industries v Dickman.
2. Causation and foreseeability. Because the duty was specifically directed to preventing injury caused by criminal acts, Spence’s attack was not a new intervening act breaking the chain of causation. An attack on hotel guests by a third party was reasonably foreseeable, although the likelihood of such an attack was extremely low. It was unnecessary to foresee the precise mechanism, such as the use of a hammer.
3. Breach. The applicable standard was that of a reasonable four-star London hotel. The hotel had a range of security arrangements, including a lobby officer, reception and concierge staff, CCTV, patrols, trained staff and self-locking bedroom doors. The court held that reasonable care did not require continuous CCTV monitoring, CCTV in the lifts or staircases, door alarms, more patrols, a further lobby officer, mandatory greeting of every guest, or lift key-card access.
4. Causation in the alternative. Even if additional measures had been required, the claimants had not shown that they would probably have prevented the attack. The court therefore found no breach and no liability. It made no finding on contributory negligence because that issue required an assessment of comparative blameworthiness and causative relevance which would have been unfair in the absence of negligence by the hotel.

First-instance determination of liability on a preliminary issue. The claims by other family members were stayed pending determination of the preliminary issue.