B.M. v. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc.

Background

B.M. alleged that she was sex trafficked in 2014 and 2015, when she was 16 and 17 years old, at the Super 8 Alameda in San Jose and the Days Inn Sunnyvale in Sunnyvale, California. After B.M. died in June 2021, her mother, J.M., was substituted as plaintiff and filed the operative second amended complaint. The complaint asserted claims under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), negligence, and wrongful death.

The defendants targeted by this order were the Franchisor Defendants: Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc.; Wyndham Hotel Group, LLC; Super 8 Worldwide, Inc.; and Days Inn Worldwide, Inc. The complaint alleged that these companies controlled or influenced various aspects of the independently owned motels’ operations, including reservation systems, payment systems, training, software, vendors, and brand standards. It did not allege that the Franchisor Defendants operated the motels where B.M. was trafficked.

The motion did not address the TVPRA claim to the extent it was based on indirect liability. In an earlier round of this case, the court had found that B.M. adequately alleged an indirect-liability theory based on an agency relationship between the franchisors and the franchisee motels. The current motion challenged the TVPRA claim based on direct liability and challenged the negligence and wrongful-death claims in their entirety.

Legal standard

The Franchisor Defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim. At this stage, the court accepts well-pleaded factual allegations as true and views them favorably to the plaintiff, but conclusory allegations are not enough.

TVPRA claim

The TVPRA permits a trafficking victim to sue a person who knowingly benefits financially, or receives anything of value, from participating in a venture that the person knew or should have known engaged in trafficking. The court explained that the plaintiff needed to plausibly allege that the Franchisor Defendants participated in a trafficking venture and knew or should have known that the venture engaged in sex trafficking. The plaintiff did not need to allege that the franchisors knew B.M. specifically was being trafficked.

Even under that less demanding understanding of the pleading requirement, the court found the allegations insufficient. The second amended complaint described many ways the franchisors interacted with franchisees, including information-technology support, property-management systems, booking platforms, and internet access. But the court could not identify allegations plausibly showing that the Franchisor Defendants participated in a sex-trafficking venture or knew or should have known that trafficking occurred at the franchisee motels.

The court also found that the complaint did not allege facts showing that the franchisors had a duty or ability to monitor internet traffic at independently owned motels to determine whether trafficking was occurring. The court therefore granted with leave to amend the motion to dismiss Claim 1 to the extent it was based on direct TVPRA liability.

Negligence and wrongful death

The Franchisor Defendants argued that the wrongful-death claim was untimely and failed to state a claim, and that the negligence claim failed to state a claim. The court rejected the timeliness argument. Although the second amended complaint was filed more than two years after B.M.’s death, J.M. had first sought permission to add the wrongful-death claim within the two-year period. The court applied equitable tolling because the franchisors had timely notice, could not show prejudice, and J.M.’s conduct was reasonable and in good faith.

The court nevertheless found both state-law claims inadequately pleaded. A wrongful-death claim requires facts showing that the defendant’s wrongful or negligent conduct caused the decedent’s death. A negligence claim requires facts showing that the defendant owed a duty of care, breached that duty, and caused an injury.

The complaint did not allege facts connecting the franchisors’ conduct to B.M.’s death, which occurred more than five years after the alleged trafficking. The court found that, without specific facts connecting the events, the alleged relationship between the trafficking and B.M.’s death was too remote to support legal or proximate causation. The negligence claim also failed to allege that the Franchisor Defendants owed B.M. a duty of care. The court explained that the cited California law concerning hotel proprietors’ duties did not apply because the franchisors were not alleged to be the proprietors of the independently owned motels.

The court therefore granted with leave to amend the motion to dismiss Claim 2 for negligence and Claim 3 for wrongful death.

Order

Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered that the Franchisor Defendants’ motion to dismiss the second amended complaint was granted with leave to amend. Any amended complaint had to be filed within 60 days after the order, by April 21, 2025. Amendment was limited to the deficiencies identified in the order; J.M. could not add new parties or claims without the court’s express permission. The order terminated ECF 185.