Bruce Broillet: Jury Says Hyatt Owes $15.5M For Neglecting Guest Who Died

Hyatt Owes $15.5M For Neglecting Guest Who Died, Jury Says
By Cara Salvatore
Law360 (July 9, 2026, 5:19 PM EDT)

A San Diego jury on Thursday ordered Hyatt to pay $15.5 million over the death of a guest who was left uncontacted for a day after failing to check out, rejecting the hotel giant's argument that it had no duty to more closely monitor her wellbeing. The San Diego County Superior Court jury returned the verdict in the case of guest Cindy Gonzalez, who was found between the beds of her room at the Hyatt La Jolla Aventine on Sunday, May 15, 2022, a day after she was supposed to have checked out. Gonzalez was taken to the hospital, where she died the following day of diabetic ketoacidosis. Gonzalez's mother, adult son and estate sued the hotel giant over claims that staff neglected her and violated their own policies by extending her reservation without making contact. If her care had not been delayed by 24 hours, she would have lived, the estate's lawyer Bruce Broillet told the jury in opening and closing arguments. The jury found Hyatt was negligent and that its negligence was a substantial factor in what happened to Gonzalez. It awarded $500,000 to Gonzalez's estate. To her son, Jose Ramirez, it awarded $1.1 million for past loss of companionship and $8.525 million for future loss of companionship. It awarded $1.2 million for past loss of companionship and $4.2 million for future loss of companionship to her mother, Sanjuana Gonzalez. After checkout time on Saturday, May 14, 2022, two housekeepers opened her room door to "peek" without stepping in — one around 12:30 p.m. and one around 1:30 p.m. — but neither saw the 4'11" Gonzalez slumped on the floor in a diabetic semi-coma, Broillet said. They did see luggage and her 20-year-old dog, Scooter, jurors heard. At 2:11 p.m. that day, the hotel added to Gonzalez's bill an additional night's charge, a $40 late checkout fee and a $100 pet fee for leaving a dog alone in a room, the jury saw in hotel documents. The Hyatt's policy is to call a guest who has not checked out and, if they're not reachable, to have security visit the room for a wellness check, a defined procedure that allows security to go into the room, jurors heard. But the phone number on Gonzalez's booking wasn't hers; it was for the travel website her reservation was made through. Gonzalez was traveling for work in her capacity as a customer service specialist for
the luxury brand Louis Vuitton's most elite clients, the jury heard. She had driven to La Jolla from her home in Las Vegas. After Gonzalez could not be contacted by phone, front desk staff did not bring the issue to security, the jury heard. At 6 p.m. the manager on duty changed her rate to a group rate but still did not send someone inside the room, Broillet said. The jury saw that all openings of the door are logged through the electronic door lock. Some time between 9 p.m. and midnight Saturday night, Gonzalez went from being likely to live had she been found, to more likely dying, Broillet said. The jury heard that no true wellness check was done — and the dog was also neglected all night — until the next day, May 15, after noon. She had been reported missing in Las Vegas and law enforcement contacted the San Diego hotel. Staff went inside the room, the hotel called 911 and Gonzalez was rushed to the hospital, where she died the next day. "So never having reached the person before they extended the reservation at 2:11 p.m. on Saturday, they then never checked again," Broillet said in closing arguments. "They knew there was a dog in there; they knew they'd never reached the person; they'd never done a wellness check; they'd never had security go look at it. And she was languishing and worsening between those two beds." But a lawyer for the hotel told the jury in closing arguments that it's not a hotel's job to medically monitor guests. Hotel staff are supposed to be "benevolent ghosts" whose job is to protect guest privacy, not "burst into somebody's room and start doing jail-level searches, hospital-level searches," lawyer Traci Owens said. Though Broillet showed the jury written policies requiring contact with guests every 24 hours regardless of whether a Do Not Disturb card was hung on the door handle — Gonzalez had one hung — Owens said that is not the industry standard. "A hospital wellness check is very, very different than a hotel wellness check to make sure that the room is not trashed, that there isn't illegal activity going on in the room, that there isn't anything obvious that would require an escalation to security level," Owens said. "How would we feel to have stormtroopers in the room just because of a missed phone call?" Owens also pointed out that on Friday night, after the Louis Vuitton event, Gonzalez had returned to the hotel and had ordered from room service what Owens called a "cheat meal." The Louis Vuitton event was at a different Hyatt hotel, the Alila Marea Beach Resort Encinitas. The meal included carbs from mashed potatoes, a dangerous risk for someone who had been hospitalized in 2020 and 2021 from ketoacidosis attacks, Owens suggested. Owens told the jury that, if they want to award something, $1.2 million would be fair to compensate all three plaintiffs — son Ramirez, mother Sanjuana Gonzalez, and the estate of Cindy Gonzalez. Broillet asked the jury to award a million dollars per year for each year of Gonzalez's expected life that
her son and mother each missed out on — 35 years for the son and 16 years for the mother. Gonzalez had originally been planning to drive overnight back to Las Vegas for another client event on Saturday morning, the 14th. But around 3 a.m. she texted a coworker and said she was feeling terrible and returned to San Diego. Louis Vuitton was not part of the trial, but the jury also had to decide if Louis Vuitton was negligent and, if so, assign a percentage of fault. The jury found Louis Vuitton was not negligent. Sanjuana Gonzalez and Jose Ramirez are represented by Bruce Broillet and Ivan Puchalt of Greene Broillet & Wheeler LLP and Charles Ludd and Jessica Ludd of Ludd & Ludd. Hyatt is represented by Traci Owens of Burger Meyer & D'Angelo LLP. The case is Ramirez v. Hyatt Corp., case number 37-2023-00056444-CU-PO-CTL, in the Superior Court of California, San Diego County. --Editing by Dave Trumbore.