Guest suing New York hotel for $1 million after falling off bar stool
An American woman is suing a hotel in New York after she fell off a bar stool.
Antoinette Allison, from Ohio, is seeking up to US$1 million for her injuries after falling off the "defective" stool at Syracuse's Crowne Plaza Hotel in April 2011.
According to Syracuse.com, Allison claims the wooden stool landed on her wrist when she fell and caused multiple fractures.
Her claim states that the injury required surgery.
She was in the hotel's Library Lounge bar when she fell off the stool.
The lawsuit alleges that it was too high off the ground, built to "coordinate with the height of the bar top."
According to the Daily Mail, she alleged the "hotel management knew of other problems with the height of the stools".
Allison has reportedly just filed the lawsuit, three years after her stay at the hotel.
On its website, Crowne Plaza Syracuse says guess can "indulge in creative cocktails in an intimate setting at the Library Lounge, open from mid-afternoon to late evening. The bar offers game tables, plasma TVs and a light menu."
Last year, a British tourist was awarded £24,000 in compensation after she walked into a glass door while wearing her bikini at a luxury hotel on holiday in Barbados.
Moira Japp, 53, was staying at the Crystal Cove Hotel on the Caribbean island and was on her balcony when she heard the phone ring in her room and accidentally walked into the closed French windows as she went to answer the call.
When the glass shattered, Mrs Japp suffered deep lacerations all over her body which could have been life-threatening, her lawyers argued.
Mrs Japp, from Worthing, West Sussex, sued Virgin Holidays Limited and received the £24,000 payout.
Her lawyers said the doors failed to comply with local safety regulations
But Virgin Holidays Limited has now taken the case to the Court of Appeal, arguing that the ruling could hurt the tourism industry.
Lawyer Sarah Prager, representing Virgin Holidays, warned judges against "exporting English standards" across the globe.
"Travel agents, when they send people off abroad, if they are told that facilities have to comply with English notions of reasonableness, that is going to create great difficulties for the English tourist industry in general," she said.
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