Two women are suing Taylor Bar’s and Grill for $5 million, with their attorneys saying that the bar’s previous owners and employees acted negligently by not protecting women from sexual assault and were complicit with patrons consuming drugged drinks in some cases, according to the complaint. The Oregonian was the first to report the story.
The two women are suing Charles Hare, who sold the bar to current owner Ramzy Hattar in May 2018. The lawsuit adds another layer of uncertainty to the bar’s future. In August, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission sent Taylor’s a notice that cited 29 serious infractions, including druggings, sexual assaults and DUIIs.
The lawsuit says that before January 2017, the bar “knew or had reason to know that female customers at the Bar were repeated targets of sexual predation while at the Bar.” The complaint goes on to say that the bar’s owners had knowledge that patrons were served drugged drinks, and the owners knew that customers and even employees were drugging drinks.
According to the complaint, the two women who filed the lawsuit went to Taylor’s in January 2017 and were given drinks that were drugged. The complaint goes onto say that a man the women did not know escorted them from the bar and the bar’s employees did nothing even when another female patron told them that the two women had friends to take them home. The complaint says that the women were then taken to “another location” and were sexually assaulted by the male patron.
Jacobi Thornsberry, the man who raped the plaintiffs, was convicted of two counts of first degree rape in April 2018 and sentenced to 100 months in prison, according to court documents.
The lawyers who filed the complaint said that Taylor’s “profited from the niche market of serving excessive amounts of alcohol to young persons in a chaotic, loud, and dark bar environment.” In addition to the loud environment, the complaint says that the bar turned security cameras to ceiling, allowed incapacitated women to be carried away by “unknown males” and did not provide female patrons with coasters that would alert them to druggings.
Beginning this Friday, Taylor’s Bar and Grill will enforce a $20 cover charge for non-students on Fridays and Saturdays from 11 p.m. until close, according to Ramzy Hattar, the bar’s owner. Non-students who are visiting the bar with a current student will be charged $5 to enter. Hattar implemented other …
