About 1/2 way down the article: http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/nation/12585169.htm http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/nation/12585169.htm "These reports, all independently provided, are strikingly similar in content," Franklin wrote. "Apparently, these types of sightings are well-known to some of your employees but were not made known to Mr. Chung. ... As a Jehovah's Witness, Mr. Chung has deeply held beliefs regarding spirits and demons. These beliefs require him to avoid encountering or having any association with spirits or demons."
In Florida--Lease Lawsuit gets Ghoulish!
by Atlantis 7 Replies latest jw friends
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DannyHaszard
In Florida, lease lawsuit gets ghoulish
BY MARK SCHLUEB
The Orlando SentinelORLANDO, Fla. - (KRT) - Ghosts may be headed to court in Orlando to help settle a very human fight.
The owners of Amura Japanese Restaurant say they don't want to move into a renovated building on Church Street Station because it's haunted, according to a lawsuit filed by the building's landlord.
"I asked them if these were good ghosts or bad ghosts, and if they were good ghosts why it was a problem," said David Simmons, a lawyer representing the owners of Church Street Station, including boy-band magnate Lou Pearlman.
The landlord sued the restaurateurs last month in Orange Circuit Court, saying they backed out of lease plans to move into the new space last October.
Church Street Station's owners offered to bring in someone to perform an exorcism but were rebuffed, according to the $2.6 million lawsuit . Christopher and Yoko Chung were all set last year to move their popular sushi restaurant across the street into the building at 125 Church St., which once housed Lili Marlene's Aviator's Pub & Restaurant during Church Street Station's tourism heyday in the 1980s.
But then they heard about the otherworldly tenants already occupying the space.
"There have been several documented reports from subcontractors and others of having seen ghosts or apparitions in the restaurant at night," the Chungs' attorney Lynn Franklin wrote to the building's owner in November.
A subcontractor renovating the building told the Orlando Sentinel this year that workers removing a floor in the old building saw a ghostly bartender and two dancing girls reflected in a mirror late last year.
About the same time, the restaurant owners backed out of the lease.
"These reports, all independently provided, are strikingly similar in content," Franklin wrote. "Apparently, these types of sightings are well-known to some of your employees but were not made known to Mr. Chung. ... As a Jehovah's Witness, Mr. Chung has deeply held beliefs regarding spirits and demons. These beliefs require him to avoid encountering or having any association with spirits or demons."
Franklin and another attorney representing the restaurant, Edmund Loos II, would not discuss the details of the case Wednesday.
Emilio San Martin, head of Orlando Ghost Tours and a self-described researcher in parapsychology, said reports of hauntings at Church Street Station are nothing new. The company led tours through the space until the property changed hands in 2001. It still begins its tours in front of the building.
In the years before developer Bob Snow transformed Church Street Station into one of the most popular tourist destinations in Florida, the floor above the restaurant was occupied by the Strand Hotel.
"That was kind of an unofficial brothel," San Martin said. "The ladies there entertained many a gentleman of wealth."
Visitors - San Martin included - claim to have heard crying from the spirits of the prostitutes' illegitimate children, supposedly put to death to hide their well-to-do fathers' indiscretions. Others claim to have seen a slender man in a black coat playing a piano or reflected in a mirror.
"Late at night, staff members and guests alike would hear the piano playing by itself," San Martin said. When approached, the man would smile, nod and disappear.
There are no workers or guests in the building now. The renovations that would transform the pub into a sushi restaurant stopped when the Chungs backed out.
The restaurant sits locked and empty, with gloomy shadows from construction lights cast over an ornate wooden bar and an intricately carved 1850s fireplace taken from a Paris town house. A building manager, Frank Vazquez, said he had seen no sign of phantoms.
A steakhouse whose owners may not be as superstitious may move in, but no papers have been signed.
As far as the landlord is concerned, ghosts or no ghosts, a contract is a contract.
"We respect their beliefs and we don't make light of this, but this is the most unusual defense I've ever seen in all my years of practicing," said Simmons, a member of the Florida House of Representatives.
Simmons wasn't serious about the exorcism, according to Franklin, who said the offer seemed like a joke.
"That was something that was tossed out tongue in cheek," she said.
It may be up to a judge to determine whether spirits haunt Church Street Station.
In addition to seeking $2.6 million to cover 10 years of rent and damages, the owners' lawsuit asks a judge to decide whether there are ghosts in the building - and if there are, whether they would meddle in the operation of the Chungs' sushi restaurant.
"There is no evidence," says the lawsuit, "that there are ghosts or apparitions in the premises or, if there are, that the ghosts or apparitions interfere with the defendants' quiet enjoyment and use of the premises."
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DannyHaszard
Franklin said Christopher Chung's religious beliefs as a Jehovah's Witness required him to "avoid encountering or having any association with spirits or demons."
A message left early today for Franklin was not immediately returned.Joe Rutherford claimed that "angels" directly conveyed truth to those in the Watchtower leadership Results 1 - 34 of 34 for Orlando landlord sues restaurateurs who say building is haunted.---big news item on the wires
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ColdRedRain
Just damn!
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Carol
If the Chung's own a sushi bar across the street, I find it hard to believe they haven't heard about these ghosts prior to this. I took the ghost tour years ago at church street station and it was one of the sites visited. Me thinks the Chung's just don't want to cough up the Change (hehe) to renovate and move as the area is not doing as well $$$ wise as expected and the owners of CSS have been having problems with the City.
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mrsjones5
And my dad says jws arent superstitious
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VM44
Pure B*** S***! Where are Penn & Teller when you need them? --VM44
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rem
Utter stupidity. More cases like this and the states will start requiring a phantom disclosure in the closing papers. lol
rem