NY Kids Showroom, Inc. (“Showroom”) sells high-end children’s clothes to retailers in and around Boston.
In 2019, the company booked a three-night stay at a Marriott hotel in Dedham. The purpose of the stay was to meet perspective clients and arrange new business deals. Showroom had used the same hotel several times before to conduct business.
This time, however, the hotel manager informed the company’s president that Marriott had a new, unwritten policy which prohibited business dealings at their sites.
The company’s stay at the hotel was cut short, the president was removed by police and (unsurprisingly) a lawsuit was eventually filed in Norfolk Superior Court.
In its pleadings, Showroom argued that changing the hotel’s policy–without proper notice–amounted to “unfair and deceptive business practices” under M.G.L. c. 93A.
Marriott’s lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment asking the trial judge to dismiss the case. The judge allowed the motion. A copy of the trial judge’s decision is attached below.
Showroom appealed the decision. The Appeals Court sided with Showroom and concluded that a jury could find Marriott’s actions did in fact rise to the level of “unfair and deceptive business conduct.”
In their opinion, the justices wrote,
Two aspects of the hotel’s conduct, if proven, stand out as unfair within the meaning of c. 93A. One is that the hotel allowed the plaintiffs to make travel plans, ship merchandise, and arrange to meet with clients, all the time knowing that the hotel would upend the plaintiffs’ plans and disrupt their business as soon as they arrived. This sort of “stringing along” conduct has been held to be actionable under c. 93A. The other is that when the hotel sought to oust the plaintiffs, it purported to justify its actions based on what the trier of fact could find to be a policy that did not exist, obscuring whatever true motives the hotel may have had.
The case was thus sent back to superior court where it will move towards trial.
The full text of the opinion is attached below.