Terms Used In Hawaii Revised Statutes 486K-5.5

  • Damages: Money paid by defendants to successful plaintiffs in civil cases to compensate the plaintiffs for their injuries.
  • Guest: means a person who is registered at the hotel and to whom a bedroom is assigned. See Hawaii Revised Statutes 486K-1

In a claim alleging injury or loss on account of a hazardous condition on a beach or in the ocean, a hotelkeeper shall be liable to a hotel guest for damages for personal injury, death, property damage, or other loss resulting from the hotel guest going onto the beach or into the ocean for a recreational purpose, including wading, swimming, surfing, body surfing, boogie boarding, diving, or snorkeling, only when such loss or injury is caused by the hotelkeeper’s failure to warn against a hazardous condition on a beach or in the ocean, known, or which should have been known to a reasonably prudent hotelkeeper, and when the hazardous condition is not known to the guest or would not have been known to a reasonably prudent guest. A hotelkeeper owes no duty and shall have no liability for conditions which were not created by the hotel to a person who is not a guest of the hotel for injury or damage resulting from any beach or ocean activity.

As used in this section, “beach” means the beach fronting the hotel, and “hotel guest” means a guest of that particular hotel and other persons occupying the assigned rooms.