A judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed against Marriott International Inc. by a witness to a fatal shooting at a Poughkeepsie hotel may not be dismissed.
Marriott had argued, in part, that Tina Martirano had not established a claim for emotional damages resulting from the October 2022 shooting.
“Here, under the horrific circumstances described in the complaint,” Dutchess Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Davis states in a July 31 opinion, “having someone shot to death in front of her, splattered with the victim’s blood and fearing the gun is being turned toward her certainly satisfied that element.”
The shooting happened at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Poughkeepsie, where parents were staying for the Marist College Family Weekend. Roy Johnson, an unregistered guest of the hotel, shot Paul Kutz, the father of a Marist student, for no apparent reason as he was talking with Martirano in the lobby.
Johnson was convicted of second degree murder this past May and has been sentenced to 58 years in prison.
Martirano is demanding $50 million in damages from Marriott for post-traumatic stress disorder and severe emotional and mental disorders she claims were triggered by the shooting.
Marriott argued in a motion to dismiss the complaint that the attack was unforeseeable, it did not have the ability or opportunity to thwart the killing, and its duty was to provide only minimal security measures.
In a motion to dismiss a complaint at this stage of the pleadings, judge Davis noted, he must accept the facts as alleged as true and determine only whether they fit within cognizable legal theories.
On Sept. 30, 2022, Johnson, Devin Taylor and an unidentified man had approached the hotel’s front desk and acted as if the third man was the only guest, according to Martiranos’ complaint. Only Johnson and Taylor carried luggage but the hotel only asked the third man for check-in information.
Hotel staff arranged for Johnson and Taylor to be escorted to a room, and the third man left, “never to be seen again.”
Throughout the weekend, the complaint states, Johnson and Taylor brought in illegally modified firearms, ammunition, and bomb-making supplies past the front desk and hotel staff.
Both men displayed signs of drug use and acted erratically, according to the complaint. Johnson was seen roaming around in nothing more than underwear, a trench coat and a ski mask.
Martirano’s son was a Marist student, and she and her family were attending Family Weekend. She had met Kutz and his wife, Nathalie, in the hotel gym the day before the shooting. When she went to the lobby for breakfast on Oct. 2, she saw Kutz and joined him for breakfast.
As they were talking, the complaint states, Johnson entered the lobby dressed in underpants, trench coat and ski mask, with both hands deep into his pockets, and shouted profanities.
She claims that the hotel staff laughed off his erratic behavior, as she and Kutz became alarmed and she motioned to the staff to stop laughing.
Johnson began waiving a gun — later determined to be illegally modified to make it fully automatic —  while shouting furiously, according to the complaint. Guests and hotel staff fled for safety but Martirano and Kutz were trapped between Johnson and the exit.
Johnson made eye contact with them, appeared directly in front of them and opened fire on Kutz.
Johnson looked at Martirano, the complaint states, and “her entire life flashed before her eyes,” she went numb, she saw Kutz fall to the ground gasping for air, and watched him die as Johnson fired off more rounds in the lobby and outside.
Police found an illegally modified AR-15 style rifle in Johnson’s hotel room, according to the complaint, as well as the bomb-making supplies and other contraband.
Martirano argues that the shooting could not have occurred, but for negligence by Marriott.
The Poughkeepsie hotel failed to enforce the corporation’s strict no weapons or firearms policy, for instance. The hotel bypassed industry security protocols when it allegedly treated the unidentified third man as if he was the only guest checking in. Hotel staff failed to alert law enforcement when they saw Johnson’s erratic behavior. And the hotel was allegedly aware of gang activity and other criminal activity on the premises over the last decade.
“At the pleading stage,” judge Davis found, “these allegations are sufficient to sustain the complaint. Simply put, the allegations contain numerous allegations of the erratic, bizarre and criminal behavior of the individual defendants over a course of time, in such a manner, as was or should have been known to the defendants’ employees.”
But he dismissed three out of eight negligence charges, agreeing with Marriott that they are duplicative.
