Hospitality Enterprises and Legal Issues

Legal issues apply to hospitality enterprises in a variety of operational areas from bookings to purchasing to human resources and a wide spectrum of other activities. The broad areas of legal exposure applying to the hospitality industry are contract law, liability exposure, obligations imposed on hospitality companies by specific legislation, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). These two broad areas provide the framework for the discussions presented in this chapter.

A contract is an agreement between two or more parties that is enforceable in a court of law. This agreement creates an obligation for the parties involved to take or not to take a specific action. Enforcement of a contract, if not discharged voluntarily, must occur through a court of law. A legal contract is binding on all parties to the contract. The liability exposure inherent in a contract argues written contracts, as opposed to oral agreements.

An express contract is the actual agreement between the parties, wherein an open declaration of the terms of agreement in distinct and explicit language occurs at the initiation of the contract. The typical express contract is a written document; however, contract enforceability does not depend on the existence of a written agreement. As an example, an innkeeper who contracts to provide a specified type of accommodation must provide that type of accommodation. A town room is not a legal substitute for

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ion sites, the use of vulgar names and � less overtly sexual behavior (such as a man urinating in a woman's water bottle and men using surveying equipment to watch women urinating in ditches) was considered gender-based harassment �. Slapping a woman on the buttocks and making references to women as being intellectually inferior to men is prohibited behavior �.[5] The 1993 Harris case included important gender-harassment behavior as well as behavior of a sexual nature. "On several occasions, the woman employee, in the presence of other employees, was told by her supervisor 'You're a woman, what do you know.' She was told 'We need a man as the rental manager' and was called 'a dumb ass woman.' Comments such as these are sex based but not sexual in content."[6] In the United States, labor law is, essentially, a federal matter, and the government agency that assesses disputes between management and labor is the National labor Relations Board (NLRB). One result of this approach is a uniform application across the country of rules governing labor-management relations. States exercise little original jurisdiction in labor-management relations. The most notable examples of state jurisdiction in employment law are the so-called

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