Category Archives: Risk Management

In order to create and follow an eviction policy that promotes compliance with the Fourth Amendment, a hotel should identify behaviors that justify eviction.  This requires consultation of the law, including any statutes that govern hotel policies.  The hotel should then train its staff to recognize and respond to behavior that triggers eviction.  A hotel should also provide guests with its eviction policy or communicate in some way the types of behavior that could trigger an eviction.  Finally, in the event of an eviction, the hotel must take steps to communicate to the guest that he or she is being evicted.

Hotels are faced with a delicate balancing act when it comes to maintaining guest privacy.  Hotel staff must comply with police investigations when noncompliance would constitute obstruction of justice.  At the same time, hotel employees must recognize their guests’ Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures.  If hotel employees comply with an unreasonable search or seizure that results in harm to the guest, the hotel could find itself exposed to civil liability.

Courts have recognized that the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches and seizures in hotel and motel rooms.  Certain exceptions allow for warrantless searches and seizures, including consent.  In broad terms, the consent exception means that a party’s agreement, actual or implied to a search and/or seizure renders a warrant unnecessary.

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