A tourist from Switzerland has filed a $75,000 lawsuit against the Guest House At Graceland stating that being woken up by a “extremely loud fire alarm” set off a catalyst of issues with both his personal life and his health.
Hans-Peter Gauch, 53, said that it all started when he was staying with his daughter at the hotel, which is located across the street from Elvis Presley’s legendary home Graceland. His lawsuit alleges that the two were asleep when “at approximately 8 a.m. an extremely loud fire alarm sounded and woke [Gauch] from deep sleep.”
When Gauch and his daughters left their third floor room to go to the elevators, they found that they were not working. They desperately tried to find the emergency exits, but found that the map was too confusing to follow.
Gauch went on to claim that they finally found an exit sign, but it ended up being “nothing more than an indented wall.” His daughter pushed the indentation thinking it was a door, but there was “no exit or emergency door present.”
They rushed back to their room to call the front desk, only to be told that “the fire alarm was likely a false alarm.”
“Upon asking where the emergency exits could be found on the third floor, the hotel representative simply claimed that these were clearly marked, which Mr. Gauch immediately denied being the case,” the lawsuit alleges. “No further assistance and/or help was offered to Mr. Gauch and his daughter.”
Once the fire alarm went off, Gauch felt a persistent ringing in his ears, and he went to the hospital. There, he was diagnosed with “Tinnitus,” a condition which involves “noise-induced hearing loss” and can cause concentration difficulties, insomnia and speech problems.
Gauch claims in his suit that he has been left so traumatized by this incident that he finds it hard to hold conversations like he used to and that he “suffers the loss of enjoyment of physical activities he used to enjoy in life with his wife.”
The suit alleges that “the altered sleeping patterns of Mr. Gauch, and the underlying medical condition, have caused irritability and mood swings in Mr. Gauch, causing great marital discord between husband and wife, deeply affecting the quality of their marriage.” It goes on to say that the situation is so dire that “so much so that Mr. Gauch has moved out of the marital home due to his anxiety, psychological state, and the marital discord that arose therefrom.”
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