Another Bouncer at Redondo Beach Bar Has Drawn 2 Lawsuits : Violence: Pancho & Wong’s, where a patron recently died after being ejected, has been sued twice in the last year over a bouncer’s actions.
Pancho & Wong’s, the Redondo Beach bar where a bouncer is accused of murdering a patron earlier this month, has been sued twice in the last year for alleged excessive force, court records show, and in one of the cases paid $25,000 to settle out of court with a customer who says another bouncer beat him so brutally that he was “bloody from my head to my shorts.”
The bar near King Harbor was also hit Thursday with a wrongful-death complaint, filed in Torrance Superior Court on behalf of the family of Michael Alvey, who died after a bouncer allegedly picked him up by the neck and threw him down a short flight of steps and onto the bar’s concrete patio Sept. 1.
Alvey, a 25-year-old Harbor City father of three, suffered massive head injuries and died three days later at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center without regaining consciousness. The bouncer, Eric Charles Meyer, 32, of Torrance pleaded not guilty this week to murder charges stemming from the incident.
Lawyers for Pancho & Wong’s owner David Letchworth said Letchworth does all he can to screen job applicants and to avoid hiring potentially violent people. “I don’t think he’s out there willy-nilly endangering the public safety by hiring bozos,” said Doug Carnahan, who is representing Letchworth in the Alvey suit.
Letchworth could not be reached for comment but has said in the past that his establishment as a matter of policy fires any employee guilty of using excessive force.
Nonetheless, records in Torrance Superior Court show that the restaurant has been in litigation for 13 months on excessive force complaints against another of its bouncers. One of the suits is pending.
“I’ve been real disillusioned by the whole outfit down there,” said Michael Clark, a 40-year-old Redondo Beach electrical contractor whose suit against Pancho & Wong’s was settled out of court three months ago. “They brutalized me.”
Clark filed suit after a run-in on Aug. 4, 1989, with bouncer Andrew Berry on the dance floor at the bar. Although there was some dispute over who started the argument, police reports said that, instead of escorting Clark outside, the bouncer got into a fistfight with him on the dance floor.
Clark said that, after the initial exchange of angry words, he turned to walk away, “and the guy literally grabbed me by the shoulders and head-butted me five times in the face.” According to court records, Berry broke Clark’s nose and pummeled him with his fists and knees until Redondo Beach police arrived and placed Berry under arrest.
Assault charges filed against Berry were subsequently dismissed.
On June 7, Pancho & Wong’s paid Clark $25,000 to settle his case. Attorney Tod Ditommaso, who represented the bar in the matter, explained that he regarded Clark’s case as a nuisance suit and that “it cost less to settle than to continue litigating it.”
He said Berry denied using excessive force and contended that it was Clark who started the fight. Although Berry was later fired, the attorney said his dismissal was not related to the two suits. Berry could not be reached for comment.
Just weeks after Clark’s complaint was filed, a second suit was brought by another customer, Erin Gering, naming the same bouncer. Gering, whose case is pending in Torrance Superior Court, charged that he too was beaten. Records in his case indicated that the then-manager of Pancho & Wong’s had been urging Letchworth to fire Berry for months.
Meyer, who is accused of murder in the Alvey case, was hired at Pancho & Wong’s in January.
The wrongful-death complaint filed Thursday alleges that Meyer “had a violent and uncontrollable propensity to cause others great and grievous bodily injury,” and that Pancho & Wong’s “knew or . . . should have known of . . . Meyer’s violent propensities.”
The complaint does not elaborate. Meyer’s mother and best friend have said that he is a conscientious man who never intended to hurt anyone.
But in interviews after the incident, former employers, old acquaintances, patrons at Pancho & Wong’s and several of Meyer’s co-workers at the bar described him as a short-tempered and intimidating person who bullied customers and threatened physical injury to anyone who crossed him. Court records also show that Meyer has a criminal record and served jail time for a 1982 robbery and a 1987 phone threat in which he told an enemy that he would dismember him while he was still alive.
“They should have done something about this guy,” said Roger Bellows, the attorney who filed the complaint for unspecified damages on behalf of Alvey’s widow. “We will be seeking a lot of money.”
