Liability of Hospitality Firms for Deaths On Premises: Recent Court Cases and Methods for Prevention
Proprietors and employees need to be prepared when deaths occur in hospital ity establishments. Lawsuits involving deaths-both homicides and accidents—are frequent. Innkeepers and restaurateurs are held to a standard of ordinary care, with innkeepers having around-the-clock responsibilities and restaurateurs having re sponsibility for much shorter periods of time. Water, fire, food, alcoholic beverages, and vehicles are among the most common causes of accidental deaths. The outcomes of some cases hinge upon what constitutes proximate cause of death. Wrongful death and survival claims are the bases for remedies in death cases. Practical measures for reducing the likelihood of deaths and ensuing legal problems pertain to security, accident prevention, policy adoption and implementation, record keeping, employee training, and insurance coverage.
International Hotel Meeting Contract Clauses: A Comparison of Multiple Destinations
Meetings and conventions are a global business. To negotiate effectively, meeting planners must be aware of the differences in typical hotel meeting contracts in different parts of the world. Likewise, hotel sales representatives need to understand the expectations of international meeting planners. This study was designed to explore differences in meeting contract clauses and examine the relative importance of specific contract clauses to international hotel sales representatives in different global cities—Shanghai, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. Results confirmed that there were differences in the frequency of inclusion of meeting contract clauses not only between hotels in the three cities just mentioned but also between U.S. brand hotels and non-U.S. brand hotels. Among the meeting contract clauses, “Attrition,” “Cancellation by group,” “Deposits,” and “Force majeure” were relatively important across the three destinations. In addition, “Disability accommodation” and “Dispute resolution” were the salient clauses differentiating Washington from Toronto and Shanghai, and differentiating Toronto from Shanghai and Washington.
Selected Ethical Issues in Research and Publication: Perceptions of Health Education Faculty
A national random sample of 195 university health education faculty at graduate degree–granting programs completed a 31-item survey with regard to their perceptions of ethical issues in research and publishing. Most respondents were male (57%), tenured (75%), had graduate faculty status (92%), had presented original research at conferences (85%), and had published articles in health education journals (89%). Faculty members were requested to assess whether 21 scenarios dealing with ethical issues in research and publishing were ethical, unethical, questionable, or not an ethical issue. Of the scenarios, 3 were considered ethical and 7 unethical by the majority of respondents. The perceptions of how ethical the remaining 11 scenarios were varied considerably. Perceptions of the ethical scenarios did not differ among respondents by sex, academic rank, years taught as a faculty member, whether the department taught units/classes on research ethics, or whether the respondents were from doctoral-level versus master’s-level programs.