Hare Krishna Roswell Hotel, LLC v. Corsino

369 Ga.App. 166

892 S.E.2d 785

HARE KRISHNA ROSWELL HOTEL, LLC v. CORSINO.

A23A1016

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

September 12, 2023

Copeland Stair Valz & Lovell, Charles Minor McDaniel Jr., Jalisa Renee Stevens, Atlanta, for Appellant.

Penn & Seaborn, Charles Davenport Hudson, for Appellee.

Gobeil, Judge.

Following the grant of its application for interlocutory review, Hare Krishna Roswell Hotel, LLC (the "Hotel"), appeals from the trial court's order denying its motion for summary judgment on claims brought against it by Sharon Corsino. Specifically, the Hotel asserts that Corsino's negligence claims fail as a matter of law, and that the trial court erred in concluding otherwise, because (1) the Hotel owed no legal duty to Corsino; and (2) Corsino's failure to notify Georgia's Department of Driver Services ("DDS") of her change of address resulted in the fraudulent use of her driver's license and her subsequent arrest. Because Corsino cannot demonstrate that the Hotel breached any legal duty owed to her, we reverse the trial court's denial of the Hotel's motion for summary judgment.

When ruling on a motion for summary judgment, the opposing party should be given the benefit of all reasonable doubt, and the court should construe the evidence and all inferences and conclusions therefrom most favorably toward the party opposing the motion. Further, this Court conducts a de novo review of the law and the evidence.

Richey v. Kroger Co. , 355 Ga. App. 551, 551, 845 S.E.2d 351 (2020) (citation and punctuation omitted).

So viewed in favor of nonmovant Corsino, the record shows that during the relevant time period, the Hotel owned and operated the Studio 6 Hotel on Old Dogwood Road in Roswell ("Studio 6"). In May 2020, an unidentified woman ("Jane Doe") used a driver's license issued to Corsino and a debit card belonging to Ishmael Karim Kai Kai to book a room at Studio 6 under the name "Sharon Corsino" through a third-party booking site. Jane Doe then presented Corsino's license at check-in at Studio 6 under Corsino's reservation. Jane Doe also used Kai Kai's debit card to make several other unauthorized purchases, including at a pizza restaurant. As soon as Kai Kai discovered the unauthorized activity on his account, he contacted police. During the course of their investigation, law enforcement obtained a copy of the photo on the license used to book the room at Studio 6 and compared it to hotel video of the woman using Kai Kai's debit card. Given the resemblance between Corsino's driver's license photograph and the pictures of the hotel patron, police concluded that the woman in question was Corsino, and charged Corsino with financial identity fraud and financial transaction card fraud with respect to the transactions at Studio 6 and the pizza restaurant. Arrest warrants were issued for Corsino, and she was arrested during a routine traffic stop in June 2020. In January 2021, the district attorney dropped the charges against Corsino after determining that she was not, in fact, the woman in the hotel video.

In June 2021, Corsino filed the current lawsuit, asserting claims for negligence, gross negligence, and/or wanton and willful conduct. In support of these claims, Corsino alleged that the Hotel had breached a duty to follow proper check-in procedures by failing to ensure that the name on Jane Doe's government-issued identification matched the debit card she provided and that the Hotel had otherwise failed "to use reasonable care in renting hotel rooms." Corsino further asserted that as a result of the Hotel's conduct, she suffered emotional distress, was deprived of her liberty, incurred legal expenses including the cost of bond and attorney fees, and lost her job and health insurance following her arrest. She also claimed that the loss of health insurance left her with medical debt.

Regarding the Hotel's alleged failure to follow proper check-in procedures, the record evidence showed that the franchisor's "Brand Standards" Manual issued to the Hotel set forth the required procedures for checking in a guest. As relevant here, the manual provided: "All registered guests are required to provide photo identification at the time of [c]heck-[i]n. Team Members staffing the Front Desk must match the photo identification to the guest." Acceptable forms of identification include a U. S. state driver's license. The Hotel's OCGA § 9-11-30 (b) (6) representative also confirmed that while every guest is required to produce photo identification at check-in, not every guest is required to present a credit, debit, or bank card. Importantly, Studio 6's website provided: "At the time of check-in[,] all guests (whether individual or group reservations) must present valid, government issued identification and may be required to present a valid credit, debit, or bank card or debit card that matches the name on the confirmed reservation and the ID provided." If a guest booked and paid for his or her reservation on a third-party booking site (as opposed to Studio 6's website), that guest is not required to present a credit or debit card at check-in. And in this case, Jane Doe reserved and paid for her room on such a third-party site. ¹ Thus, she was not required to present a credit card at check-in. The current Studio 6 manager ² also testified that the photo identification requirement is related to the physical safety of guests: its purpose is not to protect against financial fraud, but to verify that the person checking in is the same person whose name is on the reservation so that no unauthorized person obtains a key to a guest's room.

The evidence also showed that although Corsino's physical license had not been stolen, Jane Doe apparently had been able to obtain a copy of that license due to Corsino's failure to update her address with DDS. Corsino's driver's license had been set to expire in early April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. DDS sent Corsino a letter stating that her license had been automatically renewed due to a "COVID-19 extension." The letter contained Corsino's new driver's license and was sent to the address on Corsino's license. Corsino, however, had moved from that address several months earlier, and there is no indication that she ever updated her address with DDS.

Based on the foregoing evidence, the Hotel moved for summary judgment, arguing in relevant part that: (1) it had not breached any legal duty it allegedly owed to Corsino; and (2) any damage suffered by Corsino resulted from her own negligence in failing to update her address with DDS. Following a hearing, a transcript of which does not appear in the record, the trial court denied the Hotel's summary judgment motion, concluding that Corsino had come forward with sufficient evidence "to create a jury issue in regard to [her] claims." The court certified its order for immediate review, and this Court granted the Hotel's application for interlocutory appeal. The instant appeal followed.

1. The Hotel argues that the trial court erred in denying its motion for summary judgment because the Hotel owed no legal duty to Corsino. As noted above, Corsino's claims are all based on the alleged negligence of the Hotel. And "the threshold issue in a negligence action is whether and to what extent the defendant owes a legal duty to the plaintiff." Boller v. Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center , 311 Ga. App. 693, 695 (1), 716 S.E.2d 713 (2011) (citation and punctuation omitted). Thus, "[i]n the absence of a legally cognizable duty, there can be no fault or negligence." Ford Motor Co. v. Reese , 300 Ga. App. 82, 84 (1) (a), 684 S.E.2d 279 (2009). In support of her claim that the Hotel had breached a legal duty owed to her, Corsino offered two arguments.

First, relying on Long v. Adams , 175 Ga. App. 538, 539 (2), 333 S.E.2d 852 (1985) (physical precedent only), she argued that the legal duty owed by the Hotel was "the same one that every individual in this state[ ] owes another: the duty to exercise ordinary care not to injur[e] others." More recently, however, the Supreme Court of Georgia expressly rejected any precedent "to the extent that it created a general legal duty to all the world not to subject...