Chipotle Workers Fired over Immigration Status Sue for Backpay

Two former employees of Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in Minnesota have filed a lawsuit claiming that the chain failed to pay them wages in a timely fashion. 

The workers, who were among hundreds who were fired by the Chipotle chain after an immigration audit raised questions about their immigration status, are seeking class action status.

The lawsuit says that Chipotle did not comply with Minnesota state law when it did not immediately give them their earned compensation upon their dismissal.

The workers are identified in the lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County Court, as Tanya Cortes and Alejandro Juárez, according to the Pioneer Press.

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Travel companies sue North Carolina over taxes

DURHAM -- Orbitz and five other Web-based travel companies are suing Durham County and the state over a new law that's trying to make them pay sales and occupancy taxes on Internet-arranged hotel stays.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 4, alleges the governments are violating both the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions, along with a federal law that's supposed to protect e-commerce from multiple or discriminatory taxes.

The filing put Durham in the front lines of a major nationwide fight between the online travel industry and states that feel they're being cheated out of tax revenue. It has produced similar litigation in places like New York City.

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Woman Dies After Receiving Butt Injections at Hotel

PHILADELPHIA (KTLA) -- Police in Philadelphia say a young woman after receiving silicone butt injections at a Hampton Inn Hotel.

The woman was in her 20s and was from England, according to police. She died 12 hours after receiving the injections.

Paramedics were called to the hotel because she was having trouble breathing, according to Lt. John Walker of the Philadelphia police. The woman was taken to Fitzgerald Murphy Hospital, where she died.

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Florida Dispute over hotel taxes escalates

As South Florida counties sue Expedia, Priceline and other travel sites for uncollected hotel taxes, state lawmakers are pushing bills to scuttle the litigation.

Legislation filed by two Republicans would exempt the travel giants from paying hotel taxes on the rates they charge customers. Meanwhile, local governments -- including Broward and Miami-Dade -- are taking the sites to court for not collecting those taxes, claiming Expedia and the rest owe millions of dollars.

The dispute has been building judicial momentum for years, as tax collectors try to expand their authority from brick-and-mortar hotels to virtual booking systems. Miami-Dade was part of one class-action suit Florida counties filed in Monroe, only to settle for under $7 million.

But both Broward and Miami-Dade are pursuing separate court cases

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Kuwait blogger sued over bad restaurant review

blogger in Kuwait is facing court action after posting a bad review of a local restaurant, in a case that could set a precedent for defamation laws in the Gulf state.

Mark Makhoul, a Lebanese blogger in court, is being sued by Las Palmas Company – which owns the newly-owned Benihana franchise – for KD5,001 (about 17,878), after the firm claimed he damaged the reputation of the restaurant with a series of “offensive” claims made on his blog.

Makhoul had said that when he and his wife had eaten at the Asian outlet, their food had been undercooked.
Makhoul’s crimes, it specified, were “the damages caused… [by] encouraging large numbers of customers not to try the restaurant by insulting and doubting the quality of food served.”

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Daytona Beach hotel owner arrested in child porn sting

Daytona Beach police have confirmed to News 13 that a hotel owner has been arrested in a child porn bust.
In a joint investigation with the FBI, the police raided the Desert Inn hotel Wednesday morning.

The hotel was locked down due to the investigation, with at least 40 guests inside.

According to News 13 reporter Saul Saenz, around 70 police and FBI officials raided the hotel at about 10 a.m. Investigators said they are serving search warrants to look into reports of child porn, child sexual abuse and child exploitation. The proclaimed owner, who has not been identified, was charged with three counts of sex acts on a 13-year-old, one count of lewd and lascivious and voyeurism.

Police Chief Mike Chitwood told News 13 the raid is the culmination of a month-long investigation between the FBI and Daytona Beach police.

The FBI said it received solid information about a month ago about illegal activities occurring inside the Atlantic Avenue hotel. Chitwood said a series of sealed search warrants were executed.

Russian Police Raid Deutsche Bank in Hotel Probe

Russian police raided the Moscow offices of Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest lender, today as part of a criminal investigation into fraud in the reconstruction of the Hotel Moskva, investigators said.

Officials believe $87.5 million was stolen from a company controlled by the city government, the Investigative Committee in Moscow said on its website today, without detailing Deutsche Bank’s connection to the case.

The probe was to do with “a criminal case on alleged embezzlement during the reconstruction of the Moscow Hotel” that relates to an unnamed client and not to the bank itself, Deutsche Bank said in an e-mailed statement today. “Deutsche Bank continues to operate as normal,” it said.

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Can hotel pizza fliers be dangerous? Walt Disney World thinks so

There's a push in Florida to encourage a police crackdown on unsolicited pizza menus and other fliers in hotels, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

What's so dangerous about a flimsy piece of paper that advertises a $9.99 pizza pie and a 1-800 number?
The handouts are really said to be a ruse by criminals to convince hungry tourists to give out their names, credit-card information and hotel room number. They apparently pose such a threat to both tourists - and Florida's $60 billion-a-year tourism industry - that even Walt Disney World's backing legislation designed to fight them, the paper says.

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Mexico charges 5 for hotel blast that killed 7

CANCUN, Mexico -- Prosecutors in Mexico have filed charges against five employees and contractors at a Caribbean coast hotel where a Nov. 14 explosion killed five Canadian tourists and two Mexicans.
The assistant attorney general of the state where the hotel is located says investigators found an unauthorized extension of a gas line under the hotel lounge where the blast occurred.

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Saipan Senate expands to 30 percent hotel rooms, balconies where smoking may be allowed

By a vote of 9-0, the Senate passed on Friday its own bill expanding from 20 percent to 30 percent the number of rooms at each hotel that can be designated as smoking areas.

Sen. Luis Crisostimo's (D-Saipan) bill also allows smoking in the attached balconies of these hotel rooms.

The Senate, however, did not act on a House bill introduced by Rep. Froilan Tenorio (Cov-Saipan) that expands the number of hotel smoking rooms to 80 percent.

Current law allows up to 20 percent of rooms at hotels to be designated as smoking areas.

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FLorida Hotel Owner Plans On Suing TripAdvisor.com

Volusia County, Fla. -- A Volusia County hotel is threatening legal action after a website listed the hotel as one of the dirtiest in the country.

According to state officials the report by TripAdvisor.com paints an inaccurate picture of conditions at The Desert Inn Resort.

The owner Dennis Devlin showed WFTV his hotel which is located on Atlantic Avenue in Daytona Beach.

Devlin said he’s furious at the travel website, which advertises reviews from travelers.

“When they put someone on a list you think they’d at least do an onsite inspection to verify what they’re saying is true,” said Devlin.

Some of the reviews said the Desert Inn Resort has roaches; however, the hotel just passed a state inspection which looks for sanitation and safety violations.

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Related articles

• "Daytona hotel ranks No. 3 on TripAdvisor's "dirtiest hotels" list" and related posts (blogs.orlandosentinel.com)
• TripAdvisors top 10 dirtiest hotels for 2011 (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)
• Duncan Bannatyne to campaign against 'cowardly' TripAdvisor (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)
• Can you trust those online hotel reviews? (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)

In Australia if you want a drink then give us your fingerprints

THOUSANDS of clubbers and pub patrons are being forced to submit to fingerprint and photographic scans to enter popular venues, seemingly unaware of the ramifications of handing over their identity.

Biometric scanners, once the domain of James Bond movies, are flooding the pub market as the fix-all solution to violence and antisocial behaviour. The pubs are exerting more power than the police or airport security by demanding photos, fingerprints and ID. Police can only do it if they suspect someone of committing a crime and they must destroy the data if the person is not charged or found not guilty.

Yet one company boasts that the sensitive information collected about patrons can be kept for years and shared with other venues in the country - in what appears to be a breach of privacy laws.

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Angry employees at Central Park's Boathouse Restaurant secretly taping their bosses

Employees at the iconic Boathouse Restaurant in Central Park have been secretly taping their bosses.
Fed up with their treatment by management, dozens of waiters and dishwashers have been reporting to work for the past year armed with miniature cassette recorders and have taped hundreds of workplace conversations.
"These tapes and transcripts provide irrefutable proof that the Boathouse Restaurant has repeatedly violated federal labor laws," said Peter Ward, president of Local 6 of the hotel and restaurant workers union.
Restaurant owner Dean Poll can be heard on several of the tapes warning his employees that if they vote for a union he "will go out of business."
A dozen workers claimed Thursday in interviews with the Daily News that supervisors routinely threatened and retaliated against them for trying to organize a union.

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Taco Bell fights back on beef lawsuit with ad push

Taco Bell is launching an advertising campaign Friday to fight back against a lawsuit charging its taco filling isn't beef.

The fast-food chain placed full-page print ads in Friday's editions of the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times and other papers as well as online ads to "set the record straight," company President Greg Creed told The Associated Press.

The print ads say, in huge letters, "Thank you for suing us. Here's the truth about our seasoned beef." They go on to outline the meat's ingredients. The chain did not say how much it is spending on the campaign, but such ads in national newspapers can cost more than $100,000.

The class-action lawsuit was filed late last week in federal court in California. It claimed Taco Bell falsely advertised its products as "beef." The suit alleges that the fast-food chain actually uses a meat mixture in its burritos and tacos that contains binders and extenders and does not meet requirements set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be labeled beef.

Taco Bell quickly denied the accusation. "The lawsuit is bogus and filled with completely inaccurate facts," Taco Bell President Creed said in an interview.

See advertisement

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Related articles

• Taco Bell responds to lawsuit (hospitalitybusinessnews.com)

Unite Here Local 2 Leader Mike Casey Feels Heat from Union Members After Recent Revelations of Union Misuse of Funds, Lack of Contract for 2 Years

This is year is off to a rocky start for Local 2 Unite Here and its leader Mike Casey. First, the union was forced by the federal government to replace money it had illegally taken from employee trust funds after it was cited for Unfair Labor Practices. Now other hotels are considering filing Unfair Labor Practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board on the same money transfer issue.

But the even bigger story is that Mike Casey may be losing his grip on his members. This week hotel employees who heard about the misuse of funds by Casey and Local 2 leaders started wearing buttons that said “Mike Casey’s Union NO!!! Union Yes.”

Local 2 union leaders demanded that members remove the anti-Casey buttons. Word in the hallways of some of the largest hotels in San Francisco is that employees are tired of Casey’s demonstrations and boycotts and want a settlement with hotel management.

Hotel union membership has dropped from 13,000 to 9,000, a 30 percent drop over the past three years. While the economy played a big role in job losses, many Local 2 members hold Casey’s boycott and labor actions responsible for their own economic hardship and loss of jobs.

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Union loses battle against Latham Holiday Inn Express

COLONIE -- The union trying to organize workers at the Holiday Inn Express in Latham has lost another legal battle against the hotel.

Last week, the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C., once again dismissed a host of labor charges that Workers United Local 471 had made against the hotel claiming unfair labor practices.

The decision last week denied an appeal that the union made of a September decision by the NLRB to dismiss the case brought against the hotel by the union.

"Your appeal from the regional director's refusal to issue (a) complaint has been carefully considered," NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon wrote in a Jan. 21 letter. "The appeal is denied."

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Texas company sues Las Vegas Sands over rights to ‘Palazzo’ name

Another trademark infringement lawsuit has been filed in a dispute between the Palazzo resort on the Las Vegas Strip and a Texas clothing company.

The Palazzo hotel-casino, owned by Las Vegas Sands Corp., in 2009 sued Palazzo Design Corp. of Houston, charging the Houston company was threatening litigation over the Las Vegas Palazzo's sale of T-shirts and clothing items bearing the hotel's name.

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American socialite sues hotel for loss of diamond ring

SINGAPORE : An American socialite is suing Shangri-La Hotel for the loss of a 6.41-carat diamond ring.

She claims it is worth about S$280,000, about the price of a 3-room HDB flat.

The hotel disputes that, saying it is only worth a quarter of that price.

The owner of the ring, Ms Anne Hendricks Bass from Texas, said she had bought it from JAR's, a famous jeweller.

In her first appearance in the High Court - in a trial that is expected to last till Thursday - Ms Bass claimed that the hotel staff or masseuse had stolen the ring in 2009 when she was a guest there.

Shangri-La, through its lawyer Anparasan Kamachi from KhattarWong, said Ms Bass was making the claim because she was rejected by insurers, but Ms Bass disagreed.

The trial continues on Wednesday. A gemologist for the defence is expected to testify that the ring is worth between S$64,000 and S$77,000.

Ms Bass is one of the richest women in the US with a $260-million divorce settlement from Texas billionaire Sid Bass.

- CNA/al

A $400,000 hotel room-service tab? How?

Many unanswered questions remain in the case of the two women convicted of embezzling nearly $6 million from Aviva USA.

Some of you, for instance, want to know why Phyllis Stevens received a term of only six years in prison for her crimes against the West Des Moines life insurance-annuities company and why her spouse, Marla Stevens, got only three.

It's a good question, but mine isn't bad, either: How in the world did Marla Stevens rack up $400,000 in hotel room-service charges? Is it even humanly possible?

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Boom Boom Room cocktail waitresses claim Standard canned them for lacking 'runway model' looks

Two cocktail cuties at The Standard say they got canned for not fitting the mold of "willowy, svelte and statuesque runway models" at the trendy hotel's Boom Boom Room.

Aspiring actresses Faye Rex and Stephanie Jaggers are suing the Meatpacking District hotel, claiming management sees fit to employ only women with runway model looks at its sexy playpen above the High Line.

"There's definitely a type at the Boom Boom Room - and that type is beautiful, tall and skinny," said Richard Roth, a lawyer for the women. "Compare that to the men."

Rex and Jaggers lost their jobs as cocktail waitresses last summer soon after the reopening of the Boom Boom Room, where beauties frolic in a hot tub planted in the middle of the 18th-floor hotspot.

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