Hit crossing a busy road to the hotel's own parking

Attorney Answer

There are potentially two separate claims here against two separate defendants, and they are worth keeping apart because they rise and fall on different things. There is also one rule in Alabama that threatens both of them at once, and it is the reason to be careful from the very first conversation.

The claim against the driver is the ordinary one: that they failed to use reasonable care and that this caused the injuries. Speed, attention, lookout and whether they could have avoided him are the questions.

The claim against the hotel is a different kind of case. It is not about how the driver drove. It is about whether a business that directed its guests to park across a busy highway took reasonable care for their safety in doing so. The facts that matter are things like how the arrangement was presented to guests, whether there was any safe crossing point, what the lighting and traffic were like, whether the hotel knew of near-misses or earlier incidents, and whether anything at all was done to make the crossing safer. A business that creates the need to cross a dangerous road, and does nothing about the crossing, is in a different position from one that merely happens to be near a busy road — and that distinction is the heart of the claim.

Now the rule that threatens both. Alabama is one of a handful of states that still applies contributory negligence, and it changes everything about a claim here. If the person claiming is found to have been negligent themselves, and that negligence helped cause the injury, they recover nothing — not a reduced amount, nothing. There is no apportionment and no percentage.

Two things soften that, and both matter.

It is a defense the other side has to prove. Contributory negligence is an affirmative defense, so the burden is on the defendant to establish it rather than on the claimant to disprove it. And it is not established simply by showing carelessness: the defendant generally has to show the claimant knew of the danger, appreciated it, and failed to take reasonable care anyway. Alabama's courts have said that simple heedlessness is not enough, and that it is normally a question for a jury rather than something decided as a matter of law.

And it is no defense at all to wanton conduct. Where the other party's behavior goes beyond ordinary negligence to wantonness, contributory negligence does not bar the claim. That makes how the other driver's conduct is characterized one of the most consequential questions in an Alabama case.

For a pedestrian this bears down hard, and it is the first thing both defendants will reach for. Where he crossed, whether there was a crossing available and he used it, whether he looked, whether he stepped out — any of that, if it amounts to a want of reasonable care for his own safety that helped cause the collision, does not reduce the claim against either defendant. It ends both.

Which is precisely why the hotel's arrangement matters beyond being the source of a second defendant. If guests were given no safe way across and the crossing point he used was the one the arrangement effectively required, that bears directly on whether his conduct was unreasonable at all. The two questions are connected, and that is an argument that has to be built from evidence about the site rather than asserted.

The evidence is at the hotel and it is under the hotel's control. Camera footage, incident records, what other guests were told, whether this had happened before. None of it is yours, all of it is perishable, and a written request to preserve it needs to go in now rather than after the medical position is clear.

What you can do

1. Get him the medical care he needs and keep every record. Everything else here is second to that. 2. Write to the hotel now asking it to preserve all camera footage, incident reports and records relating to guest parking and to any previous incident at that crossing. Put it in writing, keep a copy, and do it before anything else. 3. Photograph the site — the hotel entrance, the parking area, the road between them, the sightlines, the lighting and the nearest crossing point if there is one. Do it at the same time of day. 4. Get the crash report and check how it describes where he was crossing. 5. Find any witness, including other guests and hotel staff, and note what guests were told about where to park. 6. Keep anything showing the parking arrangement — the booking confirmation, signage, a key card folder, anything given to you at check-in. 7. Do not give any insurer a recorded statement about how he came to be crossing, and do not discuss fault with the hotel. 8. Speak to an Alabama attorney quickly. There are two defendants, the evidence for the stronger one sits with the hotel, and in a state where partial fault defeats a claim outright this is not a matter to run alone.

⏱ Time limits apply. Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l) gives two years: “all actions for any injury to the person or rights of another not arising from contract and not specifically enumerated in this section must be brought within two years.” Evidence goes sooner — footage is overwritten and memories fade — so the practical deadline is usually much earlier than the legal one.

An Alabama attorney can tell you quickly how the facts here line up, and most will look at a matter like this at no cost.