A federal lawsuit filed by a successful African-American businessman against a Newport Beach steakhouse that repeatedly listed him on credit card receipts as “McStinkyNigger,” “McNigShit” and “McCottonwood” has been mutually dismissed, according to records at Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Orange County.
Court files show that lawyers representing plaintiff Mark McHenry and Landmark Steakhouse of Corona del Mar agreed to a stipulated settlement of the lawsuit on Feb. 2 — a month before the case was scheduled to be heard by a jury.
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to McHenry is going to be financially substantial. It is against federal
law for a public business to brazenly discriminate against a customer
based on race.
And there was this: The 10-month-old case ended after
McHenry's lawyers at Reed Smith LLP in Los Angeles uncovered an additional 12 inflammatory examples of racists
comments and after U.S. Magistrate Judge Victor B. Kenton
rejected the restaurant's strenuous attempts to thwart the lawyers from inspecting 167,000 other customer receipts to check for a systematic, widespread use of racial epithets.
In a deposition, Mario Marovic, a partial owner of CDM Restaurant, Inc. which includes Landmark Steakhouse, said that he does not “discriminate against any group of people on any basis whatsoever.”
The court files reviewed by the Weekly
show that Marovic was shocked by McHenry's allegations, conducted an
investigation and ultimately blamed the racist incidents on a bartender,
Michael Cederoth. Though Cederoth did not confess, Marovic
believed he'd given “inconsistent” answers during interviews and fired
him a week after the lawsuit was filed, according to court records.
A
customer during dozens and dozens of visits,
McHenry had considered the restaurant enjoyable, took friends there and
was a generous tipper. After one visit he returned home, saw an
inflammatory receipt and discovered older receipts were similarly
despicable. When confronted, restaurant employees including manager
Dustin Caratello repeatedly apologized and attempted to downplay the
bigotry, according to court records.
At the time of the McHenry incidents, the Orange County Young Republicans chose Landmark Steakhouse as their “favorite spot” for monthly drink mixers. We know this because both sides in the litigation tied the group to the dispute in their official filings, and the federal judge noted their presence as well, according to court records.
Obama is scheduled to attend a Thursday Corona del Mar campaign event just blocks away from the Landmark Steakhouse.
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–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
(email: rscottmoxley at ocweekly dot com)
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.