$500,000 Lawsuit for Incomplete Breakfast Dismissed

The Setai Club and Spa (Image credit: The Setai/AP Illustration)

A New York judge dismissed a $500,000 lawsuit, filed by a lawyer
against his Wall Street health club for failing to provide a “full
complimentary breakfast.”

Richard Katz, a Manhattan attorney, said he paid $5,000 a year as a
member of The Setai Club and Spa Wall Street for benefits like a “full
complimentary breakfast,” according to a suit filed in November 2011.
But after joining in December 2009, Katz said the club no longer
provided the same breakfast he said he was promised starting in August
2010 and “continuing intermittently.”

Katz did not immediately return a request for comment.

The suit said that the club “promised to the plaintiff that the club membership included ‘complimentary full breakfast.’”

Katz’s suit asked for damages of $500,000 for his dues and for the
club’s alleged fraud, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment, among
other actions. That included $5,000 because he said the spa manager,
Amanda Wells, “libeled” him by sharing an email she sent to Katz with
the spa’s operations director.

In that email from October 20, 2011, she canceled his membership,
saying, “You have blatantly harassed me in a threatening manner for the
duration of this year…”

Wells canceled Katz’s membership after he sent an email that said,
“WHAT THE F— IS GOING ON? …How would you like to explain there has been
no yogurt for two (2) weeks and now no cereal. When does the coffee run
out?” according to the New York Daily News.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ellen Coin dismissed the case and
ordered Katz to pay $440 to the club’s attorneys in a notice signed this
week.

“This is a victory for the justice system,” Ryan Karben, Wells’
attorney, told ABC News. “We all lose when the courts are abused with
meritless litigation.”

Karben told the Daily News that the judge told Katz at a hearing “he should be ashamed of himself” for filing the suit.