Former Primadonna chief Primm named in suit

Grace Leong

Tuesday, July 20, 1999 | 11:15 a.m.

Former Primadonna Resorts Chairman and Chief Executive Gary Primm has been named a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed against the hotel casino company by a Florida woman who says she was abducted and raped while working on a Primadonna yacht.

Las Vegas attorney Janet Pancoast, one of the lawyers representing the Florida woman, who filed the complaint under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said her client wasn't sure of the defendant's first name and had made a mistake identifying him in the lawsuit initially as Peter Primm.

On realizing the mistake, the plaintiff's Florida counsel, James Walker, sent a photograph of Gary Primm to her and she identified him as the man for whom she had worked for on the yacht, Pancoast said.

The amended suit said the plaintiff was abandoned at an airport in Mexico in late February without money and assistance, medical care and treatment, after she was abducted and gang-raped while in service as a chef aboard the Primadonna yacht.

Primadonna had cancelled her airline ticket for her return to the United States for medical treatment shortly after the assault, because she didn't return to the vessel to resume her work obligations for Primm and his family, the suit said.

Primm and Primadonna were accused of engaging "in a pattern of delay, obstruction, oppression, intimidation, coercion and illegal conduct" when the plaintiff tried to get her wages and expenses.

"This is a Primm family issue, but not necessarily a Primadonna issue. The yacht was owned by the Primm family, not Primadonna Resorts," Primadonna President and Chief Operating Officer John Redmond said.

He declined further comment on the lawsuit's allegations.

Before it was acquired by MGM Grand Inc. in March, Primadonna Resorts owned three hotel-casinos at Primm on the California-Nevada border and half of the New York-New York hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.