Joe Moinian’s company was ordered last week to pay $2 million to a former guest who was injured at his Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Midtown several years ago when a sliding door fell on her, causing serious injuries.
But that figure pales in comparison to the $30 million in punitive damages the Moinian Group and Hilton were ordered to pay after a judge found that they willfully failed to preserve key evidence in the case.
“They knew about it and that it was extremely dangerous,” said Jonathan Sneed, one of the attorneys at the law firm Abraham, Watkins who represented the injured guest. “And when someone tried to hold them to any level of accountability, they threw away all the evidence.”
Representatives for Moinian did not respond to requests for comment.
The saga dates back to 2015 when Kimberly Curtis, a former Olympic coach and trainer from Ohio, stayed at Moinian’s hotel at 237 West 54th Street — the largest Hilton Garden Inn in North America.
During the stay, Curtis was injured when a barn-style door meant to slide on a track came off and fell on her, resulting in serious knee and back injuries.
Curtis sued in 2018. Her attorneys found that Moinian and Hilton were well aware of the safety problems with these particular barn doors. Through discovery, they found that the doors were repeatedly falling off, to the point where it was the leading issue in the hotel’s maintenance reports.
When the case eventually went to trial late last month, Moinian’s and Hilton’s attorney sargued that it was a pair of contractors that were responsible for the faulty doors, and that the hoteliers should be indemnified.
But before the jury went off to decide the case, the judge found that the hoteliers willfully failed to preserve a list of evidence: maintenance reports, emails and phone records regarding issues with the doors, incident reports on other similar injuries and the actual door that injured Curtis.
When the jury came back earlier this week they found Moinian and Hilton had acted negligently. The court awarded Curtis $2 million in compensatory damages. The jury also found the hoteliers acted recklessly, resulting in the $30 million in punitive damages.