The Balboa Bay Club is an expensive private club in Newport Beach that once attracted stars like Natalie Wood and John Wayne, and hosted rallies for Kennedy and Nixon while they were on campaign tours in the Southland, but a new lawsuit says it's more like a moneyed frat party these days, complete with bathroom sexcapades and people "stuffing $100 bills into waitresses' blouses." The lawsuit was filed by now-former lifetime club member Steve George, who says club management discriminated against him by looking the other way for other members, but "kick[ing] him out after one incident when he accidentally mixed painkillers and alcohol" (italics ours), reports the Daily Pilot. Lucky for us, the lawsuit "spends at least five pages" listing hilariously awful behavior at the Bay Club that has gone unpunished.
George alleges that workaday events at the exclusive club have included:
· The host of "a popular reality show" and her husband doing shots by a pool while their daughters, strapped into a stroller, rolled into the water. (The girls were saved by the lifeguard on duty.)
· A member and his wife having sex on a boat dock. (Actually this was not a normal event, because they usually do it in the club's bathrooms, the lawsuit claims.)
· Club members or children of club members "setting a basketball court on fire."
· Members embarking on a drunken cruise but drunkenly leaving behind a three-year-old.
· Members hurling racial insults (ok, that one is not hilarious).
· And of course stuffing large bills into waitresses' blouses.
These people we not reprimanded, says the lawsuit, and yet George's lifetime membership was taken away just because one time he had an "adverse reaction" after mixing alcohol with Percocet for a broken arm and got in an argument with club staff. "Mr. George honestly didn't do anything," George's lawyer says. "He didn't hit anyone." If anything, he's the victim here, as he was totally "Unaware of the problems associated with mixing alcohol with the medication" he was taking. Since he was injured, the lawsuit says, he was disabled, which makes his banishment from the club a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Not surprisingly, a lawyer for the Balboa Bay Club sees it in a different light: "We just don't think the ADA was created to protect people who have Oxycodone and then drink to excess." They add that this was actually George's third strike and that there were two other times when George became bellicose in the bar, including one when the cops were called. As for George's allegations that everyone at the club is a gropey drunk, the club says through its lawyer that its members are "ladies and gentlemen."
George's lawyer is requesting a jury trial and also hopes to get an injunction that would make the club take George back and allow him to keep paying his $15,000 a month to keep his two yachts at the club's marina.
· Lawsuit alleges bias, fights, public sex at Balboa Bay Club [DP]
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