I tend to apply an “innocent until proven guilty” sort of perspective even to civil cases. And in cases like this, I put myself in the hotel’s shoes. Out of the box I see it as “there had better be some gross negligence here or the planitiff gets nothing.
And I view it from the perspective of before it happened. i.e. it had never happened before.
I was on the juries of two one month technical cases in Seattle in superior court about 30 years ago. As soon as the jury retired to deliberate, I told the rest of the jurors about jury nullification.
Both were civil cases. The defendant won in both cases. One was the city of Seattle regarding a fall on a playground. The other was a doctor replacing blood vessels in a man’s leg.
I understand completely. In this case I’m applying a “guilty until the facts come out” standard because it might be the only way of ensuring that the facts actually DO come out.