I'm not a lawyer and have never stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so I'm no legal authority but I have served on several juries and I've found the round table discussions with the jury after a trial chaired by the judge to be particularly enlightening about the law and the legal system.

In our legal system the scooter rider may not have had a reasonable expectation of obstacles in her path (Was she warned?) and it's also possible that the tines merged with the background from her viewpoint, so she gets the benefit of the doubt and is not the most responsible for the accident.

The operator was clearly negligent but the fact that he had a switched on phone with him while operating the forklift strongly suggests that he wasn't trained in its' safe operation, so he too gets the benefit of the doubt and in the worst case is only partially culpable.

The accident could have been prevented entirely by the forklift owner or lessee providing proper training which included safety measures and operating procedures (no cell phones, erect barricades, keep forks low, pay attention, etc.) which would have satisfied the prudent and reasonable precautions requirement. This viewpoint will be the legally dominant one and the forklift owner or lessee will be the one taking it in the shorts from this accident under the US legal system.

Lawyers spend a lot of time thinking about ways to mold the evidence at hand into a scenario in which they prevail (and get paid) so justice is only an occasional by-product of the legal system. To clarify, I personally think that stupidity should hurt and that fone heads are an infestation.