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A Katrina refugee who resettled in Texas following the flooding of New Orleans is suing a Manhattan hotel for $100 million, after she was nearly burnt to death in her room's shower. Ethel Tropez, a 79-year-old woman who had to resettle in Live Oak, TX after Katrina, was visiting NYC and staying at the Hotel Chandler on 31st St., near 5th Ave.
She claims that while visiting the Manhattan with her daughter, she turned on the water in her room's shower and was blasted by excruciatingly hot water and fainted. By the time her daughter returned, Tropez had been subjected to the scalding spray for 30 minutes.
The extent of her burns required prolonged hospital stays and multiple skin grafts to repair the third degree burns that Tropez suffered in the shower stall. Her daughter says that her mother still has difficulty walking and continues to seek medical treatment back in Texas.
A sharp-eyed commenter at Daily Intel notes that the General Manager of the Hotel Chandler is Simon van Kempen, the husband of one of the Real Housewives of New York City, Alex McCord.
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The hot water is hot? You got to be kidding.
Next thing ya know, someone will be suing McDonalds because the coffee is hot.....oh wait....
darwin award...almost
Hot water is indeed hot, but to cause 3rd degree burns and to require to use of skin grafts?? Thats a little too hot don't you think?
Some Like It Hot
Texans, lol
What a greedy stoonad. Don't you test the water to see if it is hot like a normal person? People like this should be whacked for being such a mamaluke.
when did we as americans stopped having to worry about taking care of ourselves? i can understand freak accidents from time to time, but suing because the shower water was hot? maybe if the water started coming out without her turning on the water, then yea, lawsuit. wtf is wrong with people?!?!
learn to swim, see ya down in pennsylvania bay.
Sometimes institutional water heaters are set at such a scalding level that you can get caught off guard just washing your hands. However, I somehow suspect that given this womans age, she either slipped or fainted due to some other reason and 30 minutes in hot water, especially on older skin would certainly cause severe burns. There's no disputing she was severely injured, the argument will come down to what actually caused her to faint.
fuckin mexicans.
Agreed somewhat with Goomba. She's 79 so she should definitely know better. You set the water to a comfortable temperature before stepping into it. That's common sense. I do it even in my own shower, and I've lived in the same apartment for over 15 years. But then again, why the hell is the water that hot to begin with? It's not only dangerous to people who don't seem to be able to think, it's extremely wasteful of energy. 120 degrees is fine and won't cause third degree burns.
Does anyone here just step into the shower and turn the water on without testing it?
It didn't say she didn't test it. I know my shower can go from hot to warm to scalding hot all by itself.
Had this happen to me once- the old plumbing in the hotel caused the shower water to flash to scalding temperatures every time the toilet was flushed. I didn't receive 3rd degree burns, but I did have 2nd degree burns and a nice mummy look from the bandages. Too bad I didn't sue, could have been worth at least 50 million...
I think that happens to everyone at some point...you get in the shower, your neighbor has the gall to flush the toilet and voila(!)...
you step backwards so you don't burn yourself.
DUH
Maybe shes not used to taking showers with hot water.
Do you mean to tell me that all of you commenters have never experienced a water heating system malfunction and start delivering scalding water? I have, and it's easy to slip and fall in the automatic reflex of jumping back. I'm glad you all are so secure in the temperature delivery of your shower water. Count your damn blessings.
i think the question here is whether she was already enjoying a shower before the temperature went haywire or did she step into the shower stall and then turn on the shower? the article seems to indicate the latter and if it is, then i don't see how the hotel can be accountable.
I would guess that the water doesn't have to be that outrageously hot to cause 3rd-degree burns if one is sitting in it for *30* minutes. Check out the chart at
http://www.burncarefoundation.org/article.php?section=info&id=4
The water could be well within standard settings (120°) and you'd still get 3rd degree burns when exposed for that time....
even if someone flushed the toilet and she got a douse of hot water doesn't mean it would have lasted for 30min!
We don't know the specific details of what she was doing, the process of her entering the shower, or when the water became hot. But if it caused her to faint, I can actually believe it was too hot. No one can fake 3rd degrees burns.
Can somebody shut Albert Sharpton up for once? I hold Gothamist.com responsible for his hate speak.
Regardless of the circumstances of the fainting, the fact that the water was allowed to get that hot is ridiculous. Hotels cater to the elderly who are more susceptible to fainting and had the water never have been allowed to rise above 110-120, no scalding would have occurred. People who like water hotter than that have leather for skin.
A safe temperature for hot water is 110° F, which exposure to results in third degree burns in approximately ten hours.3 Even though this is a 'relatively-safe' temperature, exposure to water set at 110° F is painful; the human pain threshold is around 106-108° F.
The hotel should have reasonably known that it's water heaters were set high enough to produce scalding in a short period of time. 100 million is obviously an asinine amount and she will likely get a settlement for a few million which is more than enough compensation. The hotel must be, for this suit to make sense, held to task in resetting its heaters to a level that will not produce burns to a customer who faints regardless of the reasons behind it. A hot shower should never be your enemy esp. when visiting a classy hotel.