- A couple is suing The Ritz Carlton after the woman says she drank "semen-contaminated" water, per The Mercury News.
- The lawsuit claims an employee ejaculated into a water bottle which was delivered to their room.
A couple claims that their visit to the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, last November ended in "horror" after the woman drank "semen-contaminated water."
Mercury News first reported on the lawsuit Tuesday.
The pair, referred to as John and Jane Doe, checked into the California hotel for a four-night stay last fall, according to a lawsuit viewed by Insider. Filed on October 12 in the northern district of California, the case says the couple is suing for sexual assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and loss of consortium.
A Ritz Carlton hotel spokesperson declined to comment, while lawyers representing the couple did not respond to a request for comment made outside regular working hours.
According to the lawsuit, after dinner on the evening of November 18, 2022, the couple called the front desk and requested water bottles, which an employee delivered "moments later." Jane Doe put a bottle on her bedside table and fell asleep, not taking a drink until later that night, the suit says.
"She opened it, took a drink, and knew immediately that something was wrong with the liquid she had just swallowed," the lawsuit states.
According to the lawsuit, Jane and John Doe immediately called hotel security and spoke with the front desk, who called the police.
"Jane Doe was mortified, terrified, embarrassed, and humiliated, but shared her suspicion with her husband, who then asked the hotel security and management representatives to call the police," the suit reads.
The San Mateo County Sheriff's Office did not respond to a request for comment made outside regular working hours.
"The Ritz-Carlton subsequently sent the water bottle to a laboratory for analysis, and the testing confirmed that the water contained semen," the lawsuit says. It states that a claims adjuster for Marriott called the couple to confirm that the bottle contained semen, but doesn't say whether the couple or their lawyers saw the results of the test themselves.
The suit claims that the Ritz-Carlton will not give the water bottle or a copy of the test results to law enforcement for analysis and "will not disclose the identities of the hotel employees on duty that day so that their backgrounds and criminal histories can be scrutinized."
Now, Jane and John Doe are suing for sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and loss of consortium, and are seeking a jury trial, the suit states.
Because Jane Doe did not consent to contact with the employee's semen, the lawsuit says, the worker's actions constituted sexual battery and affected the woman's emotional well-being.
The suit claims that the employee "intended to inflict severe emotional distress upon each of them," and that their actions caused the couple to feel "anguish, nervousness, anxiety, grief, worry, shock, humiliation, and embarrassment."
The suit also states that the Ritz-Carlton condoned its employee's behavior and is "liable for such negligent and reckless behavior."
According to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, loss of consortium "refers to the loss or impairment of the intangible benefits of a relationship."
The lawsuit says that John Doe has been deprived of his wife's companionship, affection, love, and sexual relations, among other things.
"By the time Jane and John Doe checked out of the Ritz-Carlton," the suit states, "they took with them the horror and trauma of having been sexually assaulted and exploited as a direct consequence of the hotel's own negligence."
In a similar case from 2011, a man from Fullerton, California, was found guilty of ejaculating into his female coworker's water bottle, according to CBS News.