Motel owner to pay $85,000 for porn film

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- A jury awarded a Tennessee mother $85,000 after her two young daughters were exposed to a pornographic film at a California motel.

"It was unclear how long they were exposed to it, but they knocked on the bathroom door and said, 'Mommy, something's wrong,' " the family's lawyer, Eliot F. Krieger, told the Los Angeles Times in a story published Saturday.

Edwina McCombs of Nashville, and her two daughters, then 8 and 9, were staying at a Value Lodge in Artesia, Calif., in August 2006 when McCombs went to take a shower and the girls inadvertently switched the television to a porn film.

Motel owner Charles Su argued McCombs should have told the front desk to block access to the channel, while a hotel expert testified he had never heard of hotel or motel catering to families that did not require specific adult verification to access porn channels, the Times reported.

"The jury did the right thing and are sending a message to other hotels," Krieger said.