Strip club owner, cab firms reach agreement

Kim Smith

Friday, April 5, 2002 | 9:17 a.m.

Olympic Garden owner Pete Eliadis, who filed a lawsuit in December alleging cabdrivers were diverting his customers to other adult nightclubs, has reached a tentative agreement with four cab companies.

Attorney Dominic Gentile, who represents Eliadis, said his client, along with the owners of Cheetah's, Crazy Horse Too and Club Paradise, agreed to drop their lawsuit against the cab companies after they agreed to two conditions.

The companies agreed they would take disciplinary action against any driver who diverts customers or refuses service to customers and they agreed to supply the phone numbers of a supervisor for every shift so that complaints could be made, Gentile said.

The agreement, which is expected to be signed by all parties within the next two weeks, was reached after a 90-minute hearing between the parties on Tuesday, Gentile said.

District Judge Sally Loehrer was told of the agreement Thursday.

"It's a start," Gentile said. "I can't be any more optimistic than that."

Ty Hilbrecht, who represents Union Cab, said the parties were never too far apart.

The other cab companies expecting to be dismissed from the lawsuit are Whittlesea, Lucky and Desert.

"The cab owners are in the business of running meters. They don't want their drivers to be the ones who decide where to go and where not to go," Hilbrecht said.

The lawsuit against several of the nightclubs that compete against Eliadis and his co-plaintiffs is still pending, although many of them seem to have stopped the practice of diverting, Gentile said.

Eliadis is carefully monitoring the situation to ensure diversion doesn't make a comeback, Gentile said.