Resorts can’t pass buck to nightclubs dumping drunks, ignoring assaults

Planet Hollywood is the first Las Vegas resort to admit it should have taken responsibility for problems in a nightclub it didn't own, but leased out. It's not going to be the last.

I heard from cabbies last April, when I wrote about the Gaming Control Board's effort to force gaming licensees to take more responsibility for ugly things going on in the nightclubs on their properties. The cabbies described picking up nearly unconscious people from many clubs, as club employees dumped drunks into cabs to get them off the premises, no matter what their condition. They named the Hard Rock as one of the worst for dumping drunks from their nightclubs into cabs. I couldn't verify that, but cabbies ought to know.

We may know soon which resorts haven't done a good job of monitoring the nightclubs, because Gaming Control Board member Randall Sayre told me Thursday, when I first broke the Planet Hollywood story in my blog, that another eight or nine investigations are in the pipeline.

Planet Hollywood's admission in settlement documents is going to cost the resort a cool $500,000, and another $250,000 if the resort doesn't make sure Privé cleans up its act.

Opium Group, a Florida-based nightclub company, operates Privé. But Planet Hollywood holds the gaming license. So the resort was exposed to discipline by gaming regulators, not the nightclub owners.

The resort admitted it didn't keep control over activities at the Privé nightclub, activities that discredited the gaming industry.

Dumping customers. Serving minors. Ignoring drug use and topless and lewd behavior. Assaults, sexual and otherwise, by Privé employees on customers as well as assaults between customers.

The complaint noted big increases in paramedic and police calls to Planet Hollywood after Privé opened on Nov. 1, 2007. There were more fights, more overdoses, more people assaulted and injured and more calls about guns and drugs, more prostitution.

For the entire year before Privé opened, there were 61 calls to the Clark County Fire Department Emergency Medical Service. In the eight months after it opened, there were 106 calls.

Planet Hollywood will pay $500,000 as soon as the Nevada Gaming Commission approves the settlement on July 23. If the board files no more complaints during the coming year, the $250,000 final payment will be waived.

The Gaming Control Board has tried since 2006 to get the gaming industry's attention and convince hotel owners they must be accountable for the nightclubs, even if the clubs are leased and operated by others.

Last April 9, the industry was put on notice that disciplinary action was being considered because of serious problems at the nightclubs, and gaming licensees needed to take responsibility for actions at the clubs and topless pools.

Warning letters apparently didn't get the industry's attention. "If I cannot get the attention of the industry through courtesy, I will get it through the investigative and disciplinary process," Sayre said.

The maximum penalty for the nine-count complaint would have been $900,000 ($100,000 per count). However, Sayre said, "Planet Hollywood stepped directly to the plate and took this complaint very seriously and took their responsibility very seriously. They stepped to the plate, and that's why we didn't ask for the maximum fine."

Most of the incidents in the nine counts actually were reported in Planet Hollywood's own security reports.

"Obviously the word was not getting up to the owners so that they understood the gravity," said Frank Schreck, the resort's attorney. After Sayre called the owners in for a meeting, Schreck said, "The owners took draconian steps to assert control."

The problems are nothing new; they're the same problems being reported repeatedly at nightclubs.

Minors are still going to drink in nightclubs. Young adults are still going to get drunk and sick. Drug use won't disappear. Unwelcome goosing and fondling won't stop.

But this practice of dumping drunk or drugged customers into the casino, or a cab, or even in a parking lot, needs to stop. And if it takes $500,000 fines to get the notice of casino owners, then so be it.

It does bring disrepute to Nevada when nightclubbers go home and tell friends how they got drunk in Las Vegas and found themselves tossed out like garbage.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.