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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

I threw up in a sink at 1am (drunk) and left the water running full-stop, then went to sleep. It flooded the room, then went down the walls to the floor below, and cascaded like a Champaign Waterfall until it reached the offices in the basement where it destroyed servers and computers.

That was the single time in my life I’ve ever, ever been so glad for liability insurance in my life. They covered everything. The hotel had to repaint and replace walls, servers, furniture, carpet, paintings, etc.

Always get liability insurance riders on your home/rental insurance. It’s usually only a few extra bucks a month. Totally worth it in the event something like a sink overflow fails to stop a sink from overflowing while you are asleep.

Anyway, I learned later that my little catastrophe coincided with a number of other little catastrophes which caused them to need to make a claim on their reinsurance company.

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Interesting that your liability insurance covered everything without question since there are a few obvious points of fault/negligence with the hotel (if a stray drunk patron can destroy their IT equipment, somebody fucked up, not to mention how a sink should generally not overflow from just being left on.

Perhaps it was reduced by a percentage for contributory negligence I’m not sure OP would know all the facts (he just knows he dosent have to pay)

I think the term you mean is comparative negligence.

Contributory negligence would decline all coverage if the insured in any way contributed to the event.

I'm guessing the hotel filed a property damage claim with their insurance, who then sued the commenter, whose liability insurance worked things out with the hotel's insurance company.

You're right, the commenter would be covered 100%, but their insurance might have only paid out a fraction.

Ah, I’m an Australian lawyer and used a term of art which you might not in the states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_negligence (apparently it’s a similar concept you have in comparative negligence)

>a sink should generally not overflow from just being left on

I once thought all bathroom sinks had a little drain hole in the side to prevent overflows. But not all do. (in places I've lived in my area of the US)

Depending on how clogged the drain is, ive seen those be useless before. The general case for those to be useful is that main drain is only blocked because the user closed it purposely. If the drain is clogged it becomes pointless-ish

this also assumes the tub doesn't put out water faster than the drain can handle (from experience..)

Yea my bathtub has one of these that helpfully increases the window between “the right level” and “overflow eminent” by about 4x the fill rate without the overflow drain, but certainly can’t handle the extra water indefinitely. I became fascinated by this metric/window when I almost overflowed the tub when I missed a timer.

Y’all know that post about the importance of walking and getting off your phone? I’m your altogether-normal, socialized coworker that’s in the bathtub 2:30-3:00PM doing pretty much the same thing being described there. What a place to be and think!

Sorry I can’t respond to your IM right this second, I’m thinking about the fill rate of my glorious tub, it’s failsafe features, the pothos over my head, the spider friend in the corner, and - before you get too concerned - whether these new bugs warrant further review of network architecture we’re building out.

I love the tub, and I make no apologies for it. Good morning HN, thanks for reading.

That little drain feeds into the same pipe and trap. If the pipe is clogged, that little drain hole is useless. The purpose of the drain hole is saving your bacon when you intentionally plug the sink drain to collect some water and then forget to turn it off.

there's usually another drain in the bathroom floor, at least where I'm from

I think it makes sense to have those in a hotel room, it'll help with more serious cleaning as well if needed. And it is needed. I've heard Stories.

Same. Every bathroom in my house has that. Though the kitchen sink does not, now that I think about it (I'm in Australia).

That’s very common in Asia where any rooms with a water source (kitchen, bathroom) also has a floor drain. Even balconies often do.

Not common at all in the US though new construction may include them in laundry rooms.

They’re actually a really smart idea and pretty much eliminates the risk of a water source leaking.

Not here in the US. It is really kind of stupid.

When people say their "liability insurance covered" something it probably means the insurance also fought whoever they could so that they had to pay as little as possible. In this case, it's possible they went after the hotel for negligence as well.

I feel like that is one of the overlooked values you have in having insurance coverage. You can resolve the issue with your provider and let them go to bat downstream, claw back anything they need to, without destroying your own life.

I had an overfilled tub that resulted in a similiar result however much smaller (~8k in damage). I talked to the people who fixed it and they had an extremely set process to document everything and satisfy the insurance company. I suspect its less that they fight but more that they set the market price for repairs. Multiple worksheets from various insurance groups to document the moisture content, square footage affected, pictures, etc.

Totally agree. There's the obvious part of insurance: If there's a 1% chance of something bad costing you $1000, you can buy insurance for $12. Then there's the less obvious part, which is that the insurance company might only have to pay $900 for the same risk that would cost you $1000.

You missed the part where they barfed in it.

there is an overflow drain hole it case the main one gets plugged

if you look how that works it usually rejoins the main drain above the trap. so if the clog was lower than that it wouldn't help. a well-designed hotel bathroom should have a separate floor drain though.

In my experience, those can't drain as fast as a tap can output water. They are pretty noisy when water does reach it though.

I have an extra rider on my policy that waives negligence, maybe parent did too?

The hotel could likely point to legally binding terms that the occupant is responsible for all damages. Insurance companies are used to dealing with "odd" events where many things have to go wrong.

Not sure how legally binding those terms are?

There's a lot of terms that you can physically write into a contract, but that courts won't enforce against retail customers.

> I threw up in a sink at 1am (drunk) and left the water running full-stop, then went to sleep

One of my acquaintances at Uni did the same during our freshers week, no issues with IT infrastructure, but he did manage to comprehensively flood a conference room which was located below his room in the same building. They were carrying the soft furnishings out for most of the following day after the flood was discovered.

He set a new record in being summoned to the authorities for a serious dressing down before term had even properly started. Also earned himself a nickname he never escaped.

Rock stars throwing TVs out of windows? Psssh. It's not a _real_ party unless you trash the whole server room!

bikers don't get invited back, however

Whoa whoa hang on ... I've never even heard of liability insurance when renting a hotel room. Is this standard in the US? Do other countries have it?

This is something covered by the personal liability portion of either homeowners insurance or renters insurance you've already purchased for your own residence.

Protip - renters insurance is a great deal, it's dirt cheap, only a few bucks a month.

There is one small caveat which I think is far outweighed by the benefits - I had my car broken into at a restaurant where my Surface 4, a macbook and my notebook (the most valuable thing!) was stolen. Renters insurance fully covered it. but three years later in another state, one insurance company refused to offer me renter's insurance because of this incident ( per the agent). I had to go to a different company.

Great advice. And read every word of the policy. I was surprised by some of what's covered, like spoiled food from a power outage.

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