Update: Treetops Resort now reports $430,000 in damages

Submitted by yossarians tree on

Sorry to poke a finger in a black eye, but this story just gets worse. If you don't want to reiterate, move along.

I can only imagine the pressure inside this frat and the finger pointing, the divergent needs to cover one's own ass and rat out a fellow "brother" versus the wish to circle the wagons. The stereotype says that these kids have a "rich parents" who can easily dole out the money and get their kids off the hook. I'm not so sure about that. And anyway, this is some serious coin we are talking about.

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2015/02/treetops_resorts_…

bluebyyou

March 1st, 2015 at 1:31 PM ^

That figure includes damage to the "brand", which reminds me of  an AD recently departed.

I wonder just how successful recovering damage to the brand will be.

These kids really made a mess of things.  They will be lucky to avoid criminal prosecution.

wildbackdunesman

March 1st, 2015 at 3:11 PM ^

It does seem like a difficult sell that the resorts "brand" is damaged, considering that the resort previously mentioned that their bookings were up compared to previous years after the incident - no doubt from the free publicity.

I do want to see the frat get hammered hard, just I don't see the resorts brand as damaged.

xxxxNateDaGreat

March 1st, 2015 at 1:32 PM ^

How about we just not get all fucked up on drugs and alcohol and do nearly half a mil in property damage?

Frat or no, how hard is it to respect someone else's property?

BluByYou

March 2nd, 2015 at 1:01 PM ^

Every year we go to FL before spring break.  The stories I hear from security and even grocery store employees about the damage, theft & drunkeness by college kids during spring break seems far greater than years ago.

Yostbound and Down

March 1st, 2015 at 1:39 PM ^

Agreed, but the new estimate of property damage is at something like $230,000. The remainder is attorney's fees, lost revenue, accounting fees and "damage to the brand" per the article.

I'm sympathetic to reimbursement for the lost revenue and attorney's fees but I don't really get how this could be reasonably argued as damaging the Treetops brand. Unless it can be proven to have been the factor that lowered their business in the functional parts of the resort (which seems unlikely).

ETA: obviously am in favor of the guilty parties paying up.

I Like Burgers

March 1st, 2015 at 3:21 PM ^

If you had a choice of staying at a resort that had been in the news for hosting tons of frat kids, being completely trashed and having hundreds of thousands in damage done, or a similar resort that hadn't been in the news, which are you going to pick?  

Plus, they now have the distinction of being a hot spot (warranted or not) for loud and obnoxious college kids, which hurts their ability to recruit families for business.  There's definitely been damage done to the brand.

I Like Burgers

March 1st, 2015 at 4:22 PM ^

It does seem like a bit of a tough job for the lawyers especially if they've been sold out since the incident as someone else wrote below.  But you have to wonder how many of those reservations were pre-existing.  Also, how much damage to a brand/marketability is ~$200k?  Doesn't seem like a ton to me.

I think the best thing to happen here is that it was a fraternity that did the damage and not a bunch of random people.  At least Treetops can sue the frat instead of having to track down individuals, which appears to be damn near impossible in this case.

MGoWangler

March 1st, 2015 at 4:11 PM ^

miles from Treetops and know several people who work there, including the executive chef of their restaurant. They have been sold out every weekend this winter. They don't seem to think this had any real effect one way or the other on their business. They feel that declaring bankruptcy (which they did in the fall) might have had an effect, but that hasn't seemed to be the case either.

coldnjl

March 1st, 2015 at 6:19 PM ^

dDon't put yourself in a situation where someone can take advantage of you...padding the tab or not, if there was no initial damage, this wouldn't be an issue

SFBayAreaBlue

March 1st, 2015 at 1:34 PM ^

*cough*bullshit*cough*sensationalized*cough*media-hyped*cough*number*

Wasn't the original number like 100k?  Which itself was probably inflated. 

I mean if we're going to add "Damage to Brand" how about adding "Free publicity"?  

Personally, I'd never heard of the resort until this story. 

Mr Miggle

March 1st, 2015 at 2:57 PM ^

When you're looking to book a family vacation up north, are you going to choose a resort that you only know of for having fraternities running amok? Or are you going to book another place you've never heard of at all?

The effect of this publicity may take awhile to assess. It's easy to imagine it costing them business. The MGo lawyers can weigh in on this, but I think Treetops needs to file a claim for prospective damges. They don't have time to wait for a definitive answer of how much damage this may do to their brand.

 

 

 

MGoWangler

March 1st, 2015 at 4:20 PM ^

guessing it's significantly inflated. Treetops is a nice place though. They used to do the Par 3 Shootout there, broadcast on ESPN. Phil Mickelson, Lee Trevino, Arnold Palmer, Fred Couples were some of the usual participants. It was a pretty big deal to the local economy, and raised a ton of money for charity.

massblue

March 1st, 2015 at 1:46 PM ^

how much coverage they had? Besides, who is going to pay for lost revenues? Insurance does not typically cover that.  Finally, how the subsequent increase in their insurance premiums?

Treetops should sue the heck out of them, and if there are criminal charges, they should be sent to prison.

Jon06

March 1st, 2015 at 1:56 PM ^

Fraternities have a lot of official policies that will have been violated here. That'll get the fraternity and its insurance policy out of the game.

FIPG regularly produces a risk-management manual—the current version is 50 pages—that lays out a wide range of (optional) best practices. If the manual were Anna Karenina, alcohol policy would be its farming reform: the buzz-killing subplot that quickly reveals itself to be an authorial obsession. For good reason: the majority of all fraternity insurance claims involve booze—I have read hundreds of fraternity incident reports, not one of which describes an event where massive amounts of alcohol weren’t part of the problem—and the need to manage or transfer risk presented by alcohol is perhaps the most important factor in protecting the system’s longevity. Any plaintiff’s attorney worth his salt knows how to use relevant social-host and dramshop laws against a fraternity; to avoid this kind of liability, the fraternity needs to establish that the young men being charged were not acting within the scope of their status as fraternity members. Once they violated their frat’s alcohol policy, they parted company with the frat. It’s a neat piece of logic: the very fact that a young man finds himself in need of insurance coverage is often grounds for denying it to him.

See http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/02/the-dark-power-of-fraternities/357580/ for more.

umumum

March 1st, 2015 at 2:01 PM ^

Yes, the frats and sororities likely have liability insurance like all homeowners.  That insurance is intended to provide coverage for negligent acts.  There is almost no way there is coverage for intentional malfeseance.  The insurance companies will not pay without a fight.

JHendo

March 1st, 2015 at 2:47 PM ^

Wouldn't it more than likely be covered by the resort's insurance? Not saying the fraternities shouldn't be helping to pay, but I'd have to imagine hotels need to have some sort of policy in place that will cover excessive/malicious damage.

ppToilet

March 1st, 2015 at 1:36 PM ^

 

In an interview with The Ann Arbor News, Susan Wilcox Olson, a spokesperson for Treetops, said the new total includes fees for lost income, potential profit loss, and brand damage, among other things.

 

rob f

March 1st, 2015 at 1:40 PM ^

really and truly a fair one, when the likelihood exists that some of the frat members grew up in middle-class families crammed into homes valued at only around $2 million?

I think it unwise to stand in judgment after such traumatic childhoods...

[edit---"forgot" the  /s ]

heh