Thursday, Oct. 30, 1997 | 11:21 a.m.
It was suggested during the trial over a violent confrontation between two Frontier hotel-casino guests and striking Culinary Union pickets that the guests should have been warned of the picketers violent tendencies.
But Frontier general manager Tom Elardi testified Wednesday that the April 1993 incident involving Sean and Gail White was the only time during the six-year labor dispute that there was violence involving a registered hotel guest.
He added that the National Labor Relations Board would have prohibited the Frontier from labeling the strikers as violent.
The testimony came in the third day of the trial over the lawsuit Sean White filed against the resort seeking compensation for injuries he said the strikers caused during a late-night altercation.
An exchange of words between the Whites and the pickets turned violent and left Sean White with a fractured eye socket and, he claims, a serious back injury that will require surgery.
White's attorney, Will Kemp, contends the Frontier didn't adequately warn of the potentially dangerous labor problem or provide sufficient security for guests of the Strip resort that was sold early this week.
Elardi said guests calling for reservations were always informed they would have to cross a picket line to get to their rooms and may be subject to verbal abuse.
But he told the jury that violence only erupted when casino patrons or passers by chose to confront the picketers. Those situations, Elardi said, occurred about once every 10 days.
Elardi denied that strikers were particularly agitated the night the Whites were attacked or that the Frontier security staff even had a "red alert" status that earlier witnesses had said they were on shortly before the incident.
He said that when there were problems on public sidewalks or in the street, Metro Police had to be called.
"We weren't allowed to go out on public property," he said of his security force. "There were no procedures to protect guests in trouble."
Sean White testified Tuesday that he and his wife had left the Frontier and were returning to confront picketers over insults they had hurled.
Gail White was slapped and roughed up and Sean White was slugged and kicked after he confronted a picketer.
The trial is expected to end today in District Judge Sally Loehrer's courtroom.
Although no Frontier employees were involved in the altercation, the resort is the only defendant in the trial because Culinary Local 226 had earlier settled the claim against it for $750,000.
While Sean White claimed he suffered a herniated disk in his back in the beating, Frontier attorney Peter Ezzell said he didn't complain of that problem until 15 months after the couple returned to their California home.
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