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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Hyatt to pay ex-worker after bedsheet injury

by

Derek Achong
1606 days ago
20210226
HYATT Regency Hotel, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain

HYATT Regency Hotel, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

A for­mer room at­ten­dant at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel, who se­ri­ous­ly in­jured her hand while chang­ing the bed­sheets in a gue­stroom in 2015, has suc­cess­ful­ly sued her for­mer em­ploy­er for neg­li­gence.

De­liv­er­ing an oral judge­ment fol­low­ing a brief vir­tu­al tri­al, yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad ruled that the ho­tel was neg­li­gent by fail­ing to put in a safe sys­tem of work to com­plete the task at the time when 41-year-old Natasha Williams was in­jured.

De­spite his rul­ing on the ho­tel’s li­a­bil­i­ty, Seep­er­sad still com­mend­ed it for its “stel­lar” re­sponse to Williams’ in­ci­dent as he not­ed that it had paid for her ini­tial med­ical ex­pens­es and sought to keep her em­ployed for al­most three years while it searched for al­ter­na­tive em­ploy­ment with­in the com­pa­ny.

Seep­er­sad did not im­me­di­ate­ly as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion to be paid to Williams, who has been un­em­ployed since her as­so­ci­a­tion with the ho­tel end­ed in 2018, but not­ed that an ex gra­tia pay­ment and an­oth­er un­der the Work­men’s Com­pen­sa­tion Act, which were giv­en to Williams, would have to be de­duct­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Sep­tem­ber 15, 2015, while Williams was lift­ing an end of a mat­tress to tuck in some bed­sheets.

She heard a pop sound and then in­tense pain in her right wrist.

Williams was di­ag­nosed to be suf­fer­ing from a tri­an­gu­lar fi­bro-car­ti­lage tear and still has not re­gained full use of her hand even af­ter un­der­go­ing surgery.

While be­ing cross-ex­am­ined by Hy­att’s lawyer Kei­th Scot­land, yes­ter­day, Williams claimed that she and her col­leagues re­peat­ed­ly com­plained about the weight of the ho­tel’s mat­tress­es to their su­per­vi­sors be­fore the in­ci­dent.

Asked by Scot­land, why she nev­er made a writ­ten com­plaint in her sev­en years with the com­pa­ny, she claimed that she feared be­ing vic­timised.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted that she was not vic­timised and could not bring any wit­ness­es to prove oth­er­wise.

Williams al­so ad­mit­ted that when she joined the com­pa­ny in 2008 she un­der­went train­ing on how to prop­er­ly lift mat­tress­es while chang­ing sheets.

A se­nior hu­man re­source of­fi­cial at the ho­tel ad­mit­ted that she on­ly re­ceived com­plaints about the weight of the mat­tress­es af­ter Williams’ in­ci­dent and that they were changed on the di­rec­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al ho­tel chain as is done pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly. The Bed MadeEZ de­vices were al­so pur­chased.

While tes­ti­fy­ing, the head of the ho­tel’s house­keep­ing de­part­ment Trevor Red­head claimed that such de­vices were not avail­able at the time of Williams’ in­ci­dent.

In as­sess­ing the ev­i­dence in the tri­al, Seep­er­sad ruled that all the wit­ness­es were cred­i­ble and that the in­jury sus­tained by Williams was pos­si­ble and plau­si­ble.

He said that ho­tel’s recog­ni­tion of the is­sue with the mat­tress­es was ev­i­denced by the fact that they were changed and that it main­tained the use of the de­vices even af­ter then.

Seep­er­sad is ex­pect­ed to as­sess the com­pen­sa­tion when the case comes up for hear­ing on March 18.

Williams was rep­re­sent­ed by Shawn Roop­nar­ine and Ravi Pheerangee, while Asha Watkins-Montserin ap­peared along­side Scot­land for the ho­tel.


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