Housekeeper sues hotel over “hazardous” shower doors

Monday 17 February 2020

A former Radisson housekeeper, who claims she suffered injuries from the hotel’s “hazardous” shower doors falling on her while she was working, is demanding compensation from her former employers.

Sunan Yangniyom is suing the owners of the Radisson Blu, accusing them of failing to protect her health and safety whilst she worked for them.

Although the hotel accepts that they would be liable for any injury suffered by Miss Yangniyom whilst she was working for them, they say that she has to prove that her injuries were caused in the way she said they were.

The case is laid out in documents currently before the Royal Court, detailing both parties' arguments.

Pictured: The case is laid out in documents before the Royal Court.

Miss Yangniyom alleges that the first time a hotel room shower door fell on her was in January 2014. In the document, her lawyer, Advocate Estelle Burns, sets out Miss Yangniyom’s account of the events, stating: “As [Miss Yangniyom] opened the shower door it came free of its hinges or fixings and fell onto [her] left shoulder.” 

Advocate Burns adds that her client “was immediately aware of pain at the front of her left shoulder".

Miss Yangniyom says that she reported the incident to her supervisor immediately after it happened and signed a health and safety record about it. 

She was subsequently signed off work for a few days with a shoulder injury.

Later on in the year when Miss Yangniyom was cleaning another hotel bathroom, Advocate Burns said there was another incident.

“[Miss Yangniyom] opened the shower door, made of tempered glass, in order to clean the bath and taps. As [she] opened the shower door, it came free of its hinges or fixings and fell towards her face. In order to protect her face, [she] caught the edge of the shower door… [It] struck [her] upper left arm.”

The legal document explains that Miss Yangniyom “moved her left knee onto the lip of the bath in order to brace herself against the weight of the shower door as she attempted to guide it into the bath".

As a result, Miss Yangniyom says that she “suffered pain to her left shoulder, arm, hand, wrist and left knee".

Elsewhere in the document, Miss Yangniyom claims that “several other members of the housekeeping team… and guests of the Hotel are understood to have reported incidences of falling shower doors in the guest bedrooms of the Hotel, some of which have caused injuries requiring Hospital treatment".

Pictured: The housekeeper is bringing legal action against her former employers for injuries she said she sustained whilst cleaning hotel rooms.

It’s her case that the hotel knew about the danger presented by the shower doors, but failed to take action.

In bringing the legal action, Miss Yangniyom claims that both shower door incidents constituted “negligence” and a “breach of contract” and “duty” on the hotel’s part. 

She alleges that the hotel “failed to provide [her] with a safe place of work and exposed [her] to an unnecessary and foreseeable risk of injury".

In their reply, Jersey Waterfront Hotel Management Ltd – the Radisson Blu's owners – admit that “a shower door came free from its hinges” on two occasions, but challenge the dates recalled by their former employee.

They say that Miss Yangnoyim must prove both that the incidents happened in the manner she described and “the cause, nature and extent of her injuries”. 

The hotel group also states: “After the first incident it replaced the hinges of the relevant shower door and after the second incident it informed its housekeeping staff that it would replace all the hinges of all the shower doors with new hinges and that in the meantime the doors should be handled with care. New hinges were ordered for all shower doors in December 2014 and replaced in early 2015.”

They also deny that “any such reports” of other shower door-related incidents by Miss Yangniyom or others.

The case continues.