The Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse
The Hyatt Regency walkway case raises questions about responsibility when a disaster results from the actions and omissions of several people rather than one obvious mistake by one individual. In 1981, two suspended walkways collapsed during a crowded event at the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel, killing 114 people and injuring more than 200. The direct cause of the collapse was a design change that doubled the load on a key connection in the fourth-floor walkway. However, the ethical issue is not only technical. The case also involves unclear communication, inadequate review procedures, disputed approval of design changes, and a failure to ensure that everyone involved understood which drawings had been formally approved. The main question of this case is how moral responsibility should be assigned when several engineers, contractors, and firms each played some role in allowing a dangerous design to move forward. This case highlights the problem of many hands: when many people contribute to a harmful outcome, it can be difficult to say who is responsible, how much responsibility each person has, and whether anyone can fairly avoid blame.