Anatomy of a lawsuit

The lawsuit focuses on two restaurants and a timeshare complex, all owned by MGM or Caesars: Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen & Bar at Harrah’s Las Vegas, Sadelle’s Café at Bellagio and The Signature at MGM Grand. They are faulted for not ceasing operations after positive Covid-19 tests among the workforce, for not engaging in contact-tracing and not informing staffers. What’s more, they’re accused of having “provided workers with flatly false information about how COVID-19 spreads and what its symptoms are, in an effort to keep workers on the job and revenues flowing.”

One cook at Fieri’s charges management with telling him he looked good enough to keep working, even through he had been just diagnosed with Coronavirus. Another says he had to get tested on his own initiative. Sadelle’s had two cases of Covid-19 and yet MGM still did not close the restaurant. Reports Susan Stapleton, “Jamie Young, a food server at Sadelle’s Cafe, says she was in close proximity with a coworker who had COVID-19. She alleges that her manager made no effort to do contact tracing and did not advise her to quarantine for 14 days per CDC guidelines.” Finally, Signature is accused of a dilatory response to a bellman’s positive Coronavirus test, apparently leading to two additional infections.

Said Signature bellman Sixto Zeremo, “I have not been able to see my nine-year-old daughter in person since I tested positive—I haven’t been able to hug my daughter or see her for 3-weeks now. Both of my parents are elderly and they have pre-existing conditions—diabetes and high blood pressure. I am very afraid that I will spread the disease to them, so I am staying in my room and away from them. I am wearing a face mask at home and hoping that they do not catch it. I’m fighting to makes sure the company follows the proper steps to protect workers. It’s wrong that the they didn’t prepare for handling this. The Signature at MGM Grand had [three] months to prepare and they didn’t.”

Adds Sadelle’s server Young, ““I am scared to keep working at Sadelle’s because I do not want to bring coronavirus back to my 7-year-old daughter or my 79-year-old parents who watch her while I am at work. After the outbreak at Bellagio I sanitized my entire house. I cleaned the carpets and washed absolutely every surface. I wouldn’t let my daughter hug me until I got a negative test result.”

The Culinary’s lawsuit seeks not money—other than court costs—but injunctive relief in the form of various mandatory safety measures, ranging from daily room cleanings to masks on customers. (A moot point at this moment.) It also exposes “chaos” at Signature, where a consolidation of check-in desks, combined with understaffing, allegedly sees cars waiting all the way to East Harmon Avenue, frequent interaction with “indecisive” guests and staffers having to “zig-zag” through throngs of waiting customers at the porte-cochere. (“There’s nothing worse than a dead porte-cochere” Steve Wynn once lamented. No such problem at Signature.) “One bell person described working under these conditions as akin to a game of ‘Russian Roulette.'”

Caesars’ alleged malfeasances include not installing plexiglas shields in Numb Bar, Carnival Court, Piano Bar and Signature Bar. “Prior to June 24, these guests did not wear masks, so bartenders were unprotected from respiratory droplet containing virus that the guests might spread by yelling or coughing.” (The legal filing is not for the faint of digestion.) The Culinary charges Harrah’s with allowing a known Covid-19 patient to continue acting as a food runner—and interacting closely with other employees—after testing positive. Fieri’s employees supposedly had to confront management to obtain any sort of action, which was apparently unsatisfying to the plaintiffs. After allegedly informing employees that they “knew too much” and the “situation was out of control,” management supposedly still did not act. After considerable prevarication, Fieri’s was closed when it basically ran out of staff.

As for Bellagio, it is being faulted for providing insufficient social distancing at Sadelle’s, for starter. The aforementioned Young “worked with the food runner who later tested positive for COVID-19 on or around June 9, during which the food runner was coughing and reported that his wife had been sick for a week and a half with a fever, body aches, and was unable to move or breathe well.” The Culinary accuses Sadelle’s management of knowingly permitting a Coronavirus-positive worker to stay on the job. (The union names plenty of names in the finger-pointing process, so it seems pretty sure of its facts.) Particularly damning, Bellagio bosses are depicting flagrantly ignoring CDC requirements where potentially infected employees are concerned.

This, ominously, is promised to be only the opening salvo of many, so prepare for further incoming fire. At this point we only have the Culinary’s viewpoint, well-attested and voluminous thought it is. If nothing else, there will be a whole new set of negotiating points when the collective-bargaining requirement is up for renewal.

Incidentally, the Nevada Gaming Control Board has been policing compliance with health and safety protocols, and just released the following information: “Since June 4, 2020, the Enforcement Division of the Board has conducted 1,453 inspections and observations of nonrestricted licensees and 6,008 inspections and observations of restricted licensees. Those observations and inspections have resulted in the opening of 111 regulatory cases statewide, relating to non-compliance with the Board’s Health and Safety Policies.” 111 out of almost 7,500 isn’t bad but it could be a lot better.