A fellow bartender who accompanied former “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor the night he was shot sued a downtown bar/restaurant where she allegedly failed to provide a safe place for work and the park as the burglar tried to steal the catalytic converter of his park on Tuesday.
The plaintiff is identified solely as Jane Daw in the Los Angeles Superior Court case against the owner of the Level 8 bar on Figueroa Street. The DOE, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, claims that the bar owner would not express sadness to Wactor’s family or ask how she was doing, but instead joined the facility the following night while the remaining staff waited until closing time.
“In these circumstances, the plaintiffs were no longer able to continue working there and were forced to quit,” the lawsuit states.
Level 8 representatives did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The lawsuit identifies Level 8 owners as Mark and Jonathan Houston, but the lawsuit was filed against two companies against Level 8 Fig LLC and DTLA Hospitality LLC.
DOE says that in August 2023, he was selected for the Level 8 bartender job by thousands of applicants. Approximately a week after being provided with secure parking in the nearby patrol apartment building, she and other employees were told to park in public facilities or on the streets.
According to the lawsuit, shortly after Level 8 opened in September 2023, a young employee was robbed while walking to the car after a shift. By May 2024, the DOE had spent $3,000 of its own money in the parking lot and was not refunded, the lawsuit states.
After the robbery, management recommends starting a buddy system when walking to the car after work, but according to the lawsuit they did not advise on how it should be implemented.
“Employees were clearly expected to know their safety measures,” the lawsuit said, but also pointed out that the robber victim had left.
After Level 8 management told DOE and other employees that he “will come down to them” because the bar owner repeatedly raised concerns about parking, the plaintiff and her colleagues feared retaliation, and the DOE tried their best to take her own precautions, adding that the Level 8 owner had committed fraud by violating the oral contract and not supplying the employees to a safe parking lot.
If DOE continues to work at Level 8, she will suffer financial losses and emotional distress as a result of her forced resignation due to concerns about her future safety, the lawsuit states.
Wactor, 37, was shot around 3:30am on May 25, 2024, and was walking with Doe towards a parked car near Hope Street and Pico Boulevard. Of the four men arrested in connection with Wactor’s murder, two have been sentenced to a small crime, while the other two await trial on murder and other charges.
Wactor appeared in roughly 200 episodes of General Hospital from 2020 to 2022. His other credits included “Westworld”, “The OA”, “NCIS”, “Station 19”, “Criminal Minds” and “Hollywood Girl.”
Source link