Floyd Mayweather Jr. Photo by: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com
Four Floyd Mayweather Jr. companies were removed from one of the lawsuits against the Las Vegas boxer Friday after his attorney said the companies had nothing to do with the matter at issue.
The case involves Clay Gerling, a bouncer at Drai’s nightclub on the Las Vegas Strip, who claimed in a May lawsuit that he was assaulted in January 2010 by members of Mayweather’s entourage after he asked Mayweather and others in his group for identification.
Las Vegas attorney Mark Ferrario, representing Mayweather, told Clark County District Court Judge Kenneth Cory that local attorneys suing Mayweather in multiple cases — all involving alleged assaults by his bodyguards — regularly file "shotgun style" suits naming Mayweather’s companies without ever investigating whether they are legitimate defendants.
"You don’t just sue everybody and then force them to (file motions to) get out," Ferrario said. "It’s clearly an overbroad, shotgun complaint."
"They’ve got a John Doe defendant (allegedly a bodyguard), and then they sue everybody affiliated with Mr. Mayweather. There’s no basis whatsoever in their complaint to link any of these companies to the issue in question," he said.
Ferrario managed to get the Gerling lawsuit dismissed in July after asserting it was so vague that it didn’t comply with court rules requiring lawsuits to state clear, specific allegations.
Gerling’s attorney, Donald Kudler, then re-filed the suit with more specific charges that an unidentified bodyguard for Mayweather had grabbed him and choked him.
Ferrario, of the Las Vegas office of the law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, tried again Friday to have the case dismissed for vagueness, but Cory allowed it to proceed against Mayweather while dismissing it against four of his companies: The Floyd Mayweather Foundation, Mayweather Promotions LLC, #1 Philthy Rich Records and Floyd Joy Inc.
"The fact remains that even after dismissal of plaintiff’s original complaint, the amended complaint fails to allege any named causes of action and any specific information regarding any named defendants, leaving defendants once again burdened with guessing at their own wrongdoing and requiring defendants to speculate as to which causes of action are alleged against them," Ferrario wrote in a court brief seeking dismissal of the suit.
Cory said the corporate defendants could be re-inserted into the suit later — without statute of limitation problems — if Kudler finds evidence one or more employed the bodyguard at issue or were otherwise involved in the incident.
Cory allowed the suit to proceed against Mayweather after Kudler said he was hopeful he could eventually identify the bodyguard he claims assaulted his client.
Kudler noted that in a similar lawsuit filed against Mayweather and his companies over an incident at the Palms hotel-casino in Las Vegas, the plaintiff claims Mayweather gave the thumbs-down signal to his bodyguards — a sign for them to assault the man.
"This is not an isolated incident. We do know he (John Doe in the Gerling case) is Mayweather’s bodyguard," Kudler said.
"How do they know that?" Ferrario asked, skeptically.
On top of the suits over the alleged incidents at Drai’s and the Palms, Mayweather and two of his companies face a suit filed in August claiming a member of Mayweather’s entourage shot at them in an incident at a skating rink.
In the Palms case, Ferrario successfully moved to have the resort's plaintiffs be required to file a more specific suit after complaining the first suit was too vague.
And in the skating rink case, he’s charging it too is so vague that the individual defendants can’t respond to it and that the corporate defendants were thrown in for no apparent reason.
"The entity defendants are clearly an afterthought, as they are not alleged to have had any direct involvement with the incident," Ferrario wrote in a brief in the skating rink case.
With all the lawsuits flying involving Mayweather’s bodyguards, Cory remarked Friday: "I’ve never understood why a professional boxer needs a bodyguard."
"I guess you have to pay for the privilege of getting punched by Floyd," the judge quipped.
"Or get paid for it," Kudler added.
Mayweather separately faces criminal charges in an incident involving his ex-girlfriend.