In late December 2020, while her husband gambled at Borgata’s Atlantic City casino, Sherry Singh entered the couple’s room, took off her shoes, walked into the bathroom, and slipped on a puddle of water. Singh sued Borgata for negligence, alleging it failed to keep the room safe for guests. After discovery, Borgata filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing Singh needed an expert to establish the standard of care for maintaining rooms in a large hotel. The issue in Singh v. Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, 2026 N.J. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 1815 (App. Div. Aug. 4, 2026) was whether a plaintiff must present expert testimony to establish a large hotel’s standard of care for inspecting and maintaining its bathrooms.
The 700-room Borgata produced a work order tracing the water to a leak in the feed hose under the toilet’s tank. The room had last been occupied six days earlier, but a maintenance log showed no prior issues. Borgata normally inspected vacant rooms under a preventative maintenance program, but had suspended the program during COVID-19 and hadn’t reinstated it until after the accident.
Borgata argued that without an expert, Singh couldn’t establish an industry standard for keeping rooms in proper condition, or show that anything Borgata did breached that standard. Singh countered that New Jersey administrative regulations imposed a duty requiring hotels to keep “all parts of the premises” free from hazards and all toilets in working order. The motion court agreed with Borgata, reasoning that Singh had no basis to tell a jury what Borgata’s duty was or how it was breached. Moreover, even if the regulations applied, they didn’t establish Borgata’s inspection responsibilities or how they’d been violated. Singh appealed.
On appeal, Singh argued Borgata owed the ordinary common law duty any business owes its invitees: reasonable care to keep the premises safe, including sending an employee to inspect a vacant room for hazards before a new guest arrives. She argued a leaking toilet is neither “esoteric nor complex” enough to require expert testimony. The Appellate Division disagreed. Managing a 700-room hotel, it held, is esoteric and beyond a lay juror’s common knowledge and that without an expert’s guidance, a jury would have to speculate as to the duty a hotel owes its guests under these circumstances. Singh’s failure to provide an expert was fatal to her claim.
The Court also rejected Singh’s position that the regulations established a duty. The Court held that while the regulations dictate the condition rooms must be in, they say nothing about how often rooms must be inspected. Finally, the court found Borgata lacked constructive notice of the leak. Singh argued that the absence of notice didn’t excuse Borgata’s duty to inspect. The Court held otherwise: notice remains an independent element of any premises liability claim, and Singh needed to show how long the condition existed for a jury to assess whether Borgata had a reasonable opportunity to fix it. The court contrasted this case with situations involving circumstantial evidence of duration, like flattened, wet leaves on an outdoor step, against situations where duration is simply unknowable, like dog feces on a train platform that could have been there minutes or hours. With no comparable evidence here, any finding on how long the toilet had leaked would be pure speculation, giving the court a third independent ground to affirm.
One key takeaway is that a standard of care does not necessarily scale. While a leaking toilet and wet floor in a small hotel or business setting may be an obvious condition and less “esoteric” as to require an expert or to create an issue of notice, the maintenance responsibilities of a 700-room hotel will put that duty beyond the knowledge of an average juror. Further, a regulation does not directly equate to a legal duty, but a plaintiff must show how the duty set by the regulation meets the legal standard for a tort duty. Finally, notice remains a separate, independent element of a liability claim, and even a clear duty and a clear breach won’t sustain a premises liability claim without proof of actual or constructive notice.
