A family is suing a five-star Boca Raton resort after allegedly failing to act while their 12-year old daughter was being threatened by a 22-year old man.
According to the police report, Lynn University student Scott Louis Samaha appeared heavily intoxicated, said that he had had “only two whiskeys” and did not remember the incident, was uncooperative, and yelled that his father, also a member, was “a very powerful member of society.” (Scott Samaha’s father Peter Samaha, is a Boca Beach Club member.)
The Boca Beach Club is a five-star Waldorf-Astoria resort with the same owners and operators as the nearby 356-acre Boca Raton Resort & Club. In one critical section of the suit, the plaintiffs say Samaha had long been banned from the Boca Resort because of “prior incidents of intoxication and/or assault” — including an arrest for trespassing on the premises on December 29, 2015 — and was known to be “habitually addicted to alcohol and drugs.” Despite this, the suit said, the establishment served Samaha drinks even after he clearly entered the Beach Club “either inebriated or drugged.” In addition, resort employees allegedly failed to restrain Samaha, call security or the police, or extricate from the premises “despite the fact that the daughter was scared out of her wits as were all four of the plaintiffs.”
The 14-page suit names as defendants: Samaha; Boca Resort operators Waldorf-Astoria Management, LLC and Park Hotels & Resorts Inc., formerly known as Hilton Worldwide, Inc.; and Boca Resort’s owners, the Blackstone Group LP.
Babbitt & Johnson PA is representing the case. Read the full press release here.