The latest filing in a lawsuit against the former owner of Java Detour and Lisa Vanderpump and Ken Todd, the owners of the P.U.M.P. lounge that is slated to open in its place this week, alleges the owner has lied about his investments in everything from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to popular clubs such as Roxbury and Supperclub.
The suit was filed last August by Andrew Gruver and Ryan Carrillo, former employees of The Abbey. Gruver and Carrillo allege that Elie Samaha promised them he would invest $500,000 in a gay sports bar they hoped to open on the Java Detour site, which Samaha owned. They said that, based on Samaha’s promise, they quit their jobs and invested time and money in convincing the City of West Hollywood to grant special permission to operate a nightclub on that property, which is on the southeast corner of Santa Monica and Robertson boulevards. That permit significantly increased its value. Once they obtained it, they said, Samaha turned around and leased the property for a much higher amount to Vanderpump and Todd. Gruver and Carrillo are seeking $4 million in damages in the suit in which they allege Vanderpump and Todd “intended to disrupt the performance of the (existing) agreement” for the property.
Samaha and his business partner and nephew, Freddy Braidy, have denied the allegations. In a counterclaim they said they raised the $500,000 required in their deal with Gruver and Carillo, who they say didn’t follow through on their commitment to raise additional money. Vanderpump issued a statement after the August filing saying she and her husband were not involved in any way in the matter and that, in fact, she didn’t know Gruver or Carrillo. However, later online postings of photos showed them in public together.
In a transcript of a TV interview that was included in papers filed last week, Samaha brags that he has a stake in at least 11 restaurants and clubs clustered on Hollywood and Sunset boulevards. They include the Roxbury, the Playhouse, La Vida, The Writer’s Room, Hemingway’s Lounge and Pig N’Whistle. He also says he is a co-owner of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the Two Bunch Palms resort in Desert Hot Springs, reputed to have been built in the 1920s by Al Capone. The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2012 that Samaha had purchased the 270-acre resort along with real estate investor Gidi Cohen and producers Steve Markoff and Donald Kushner, who it identified as Samaha’s partners in the purchase of the Chinese Theatre.
Samaha made the claim in an interview with Karen Boustany, a Lebanese reporter for MTV, that was posted in April last year on YouTube.
But in an examination of Samaha that same year by a lawyer whose client was suing him for $421,000 in unpaid legal fees, Samaha denied ownership of some of those properties and said he owned a miniscule percentage of some of the others.
“I was never an owner of the Chinese Theatre,” he told Beverly Johnson, the lawyer representing Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan, the law firm suing Samaha. Samaha said he didn’t know if he owned a stake in the Two Palms property.
“The documents that you said you signed, did you read them?” the lawyer asked, querying Samaha about Two Palms. “I don’t recall because I don’t read documents,” Samaha replied.
In 2012 a judge ordered that Samaha pay his debt to Quinn, Emanuel at a hearing at which Samaha failed to appear.
Samaha told the judge in that case that he hadn’t earned any money in five years and had $10 million in debt. In 2000 Samaha and his film production company, Franchise Pictures, were sued for breach of contract and fraud by German film distributor Intertainment. A court awarded Intertainment $122 million damages. Franchise Pictures was ordered to pay $1 million of that, and it went into bankruptcy. Samaha was ordered to pay Intertainment $4 million.
Samaha, 59, has produced more than 80 films and video games. His only award-winner was “Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000.” The film, which was based on a novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and starred John Travolta, won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture.
Gruver and Carrillo allege in their latest filing that Samaha is not broke but has shifted all of his assets, including ownership of the Java Detour property, to his sister, Carol Braidy. Samaha says his sister has been paying his bills, which amount to $20,000 to $25,000 a month, including the mortgage on the house he owns on Longridge Avenue in Sherman Oaks.
Last summer Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies removed valuables from the house, including 1,600 bottles of wine, which may be sold to pay some portion of Samaha’s debt. Mindy Simon, an interior designer who Samaha has identified as his girlfriend, last fall filed a claim for the return of some of the property. Among the items she sought to retrieve were a 1965 Domaines Baron de Rothschild Chateau Lafite wine worth $1,200 and a bottle of Gekkian sake worth $45.
Never been but how many white bartenders work at Catch One?
You have to do a lot of searching to find an African-American person working at the bars in San Diego’s Hillcrest/North Park region as well. Of course, a lot of the African-American people I know have much better jobs than being a part-time bartender, but I understand DJK’s point. It seems as though the bars have no difficulty in finding latino’s to work in the kitchen and to clean the floors, but seem to have a hard time finding some that can pour a drink.
Maybe the african american men that DJK refers to were TOO overqualified. As someone who hires people, that’s as bad as hiring under-qualified people. You train them, invest in them and then the move on.
Really irresponsible to suggest that Vanderpump is a racist.
DJK: Who are you to say that the black guys were as qualified as the white guys? Unless you are in the mind of the hiring manager, you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
P.U.M.P. does not have a single nonwhite person on staff. Neither does Here Lounge. The Abbey has couple of very light skinned mixed VIP bottle servers but everyone else is white. Motherlode at least doesn’t apply West Hollywood’s Jim Crow quotas to its go-gos (when it uses go-gos) but its bartenders are all white. Same for Rage. Same for Fiesta Cantina. Same for Revolver, Club Eleven, Trunks, and Mickys: they fit the census designation of non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanic Whites. I think Gym Bar has or had a bartender who is mixed black. If y’all choose to bury your heads… Read more »
Just saw a group picture of the newly hired P.U.M.P. staff. Of course it looked like an Aryan Youth meeting — not a single minority on staff even though I know at least two over qualified hot black guys who applied.
Jim Crow segregation continues to be alive and well in the WHITES ONLY hiring practices of West Hollywood’s gay community. Shame on you, Lisa Vanderpump.
It was Tacos Tacos in the 1990s, featured in the film, “The Opposite of Sex.”
Will this be just another failure at this location. Nothing has survived since the Italian eatery was closed years ago which had been opened for years.
So this guy, Elie Samaha, sounds like a fraudster. With little or no traceable income, a trail of business bankruptcies and personal judgments, how does he manage to own properties, make investments, pay attorneys and, in general, live? Battlefield Earth was notoriously bad as evidenced by the prestigious Golden Raspberry award for Worst Picture. However, it was a Scientology vanity project that lost a lot of money. Perhaps he’s not “clear” yet or hasn’t reached the appropriate OT level (it is expensive). With the Evil Lord Xenu still alive, anything is possible.