DALLAS (Legal Newsline) - A woman who sued La Quinta Inn & Suites after staying in a room she claimed was polluted with the smell of dog urine and cigarette smoke failed to provide any evidence the room made her sick, a Texas appeals court ruled.
Ramona Simien checked into a La Quinta in Dallas in June 2016 to attend a wedding. She claimed she confirmed with the front desk clerk that she would stay in a non-smoking suite and “went through [her] medical history” including kidney disease, diabetes and asthma. But when she entered the suite, she said she smelled cigarette smoke and pet urine and saw pet hair on the furniture.
Simien complained to the clerk, but there were no other suites available so she asked for the room to be cleaned. When she returned a few hours later, Simien said, it smelled like “something was sprayed in the room.” She didn’t complain again, but went to bed. The next day she felt congested and after checking out she visited her doctor, who diagnosed an upper respiratory infection.
A month later Simien went to the emergency room with a headache and saying she couldn’t move her neck. A neurologist injected her neck and she claimed no further injuries until she sued two years later in June 2018.
LaQuinta asked the court to dismiss the case for lack of evidence and the trial court agreed. On appeal, Simien argued she supplied sufficient evidence in the form of her deposition testimony and medical records. The Fifth District Court of Appeals disagreed, however.
In a July 30 opinion, the Dallas appeals court said to survive a no-evidence summary judgment, the plaintiff must provide “more than a scintilla of probative evidence” that could convince a reasonable juror there were facts to support her claim.
Simien claimed the odor of cigarette smoke and dog urine created an “unreasonably dangerous condition,” but failed to provide any evidence that was the case. Her medical records show she was diagnosed with an acute upper respiratory infection on June 27, 2016, the day after her stay at the motel, and she said her doctor “assumed” the infection was a reaction to the smell. But that claim isn’t supported by her medical record.
“Simien’s self-serving statement is so weak as to merely create suspicion of a fact and is less than a scintilla of evidence,” the court concluded.
The court also rejected her claim of failure to exercise reasonable care. Not only did she fail to raise the issue in her appeal brief, the court said, but since she testified she’d complained about the smell to the front desk that established the room’s condition was “open and obvious” and not subject to suit.