Shakespeare must have dined with these young lawyers

Web-posted: Friday, February 14, 1997

nyone who works on a newspaper and takes calls and complaints from readers will tell you that in a dispute between a restaurant and customer, the restaurant is always wrong and the customer is always a victim.

That's because it's always the angry customer who phones with the gripe. So naturally, they tell it their way.

But that may be changing. At least in this space.

I recently did a couple of columns on the Chicago yuppie who had the hassle with a Lake Geneva, Wis., restaurant because he thought the steak he ordered medium-well was actually well done, and he sued everyone in sight -- the restaurant, a cop, the town of Lake Geneva and the town's mayor.

It wound up in federal court, where he lost and was ordered to pay the legal bills of everybody he sued. Now he is going to the Supreme Court.

That story has prompted some restaurant owners and employees to come out of the kitchen, so to speak. And they are telling me about customers who are really terrible people.

As I get these stories, I'm going to try to balance the scales of journalistic justice.

We'll begin today with Sara Roignant, who, with her chef-husband, owns La Creperie, at 2845 N. Clark St.

Sara has a policy of giving dining gift certificates to various local charities. The charities use them in the silent auctions so popular at fundraisers.

Sara says: "Something happened last night that was very upsetting.

"I was home -- we live upstairs of the restaurant -- when I got a call from one of the waitresses. She said there are people here and they don't want to pay for their dinner.

"They said they had gift certificates for $30. I give about 10 certificates a week. These were from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. They were two years old but there's no expiration date, so that's OK. Now the new ones are for $40 because our prices went up.

"The waitress was in a tizzy. Each certificate was worth $30. But their bill was $111.50, so they owed $51, plus tip. They gave the waitress the gift certificate when they came in and said they were going to use these tonight. She told them what they were worth. There were four of them. They had a two bottles of wine, soup, salad, escargot, several crepes with extra fillings, chicken curry dinners and two teas.

"I said to her, `Explain, I'm sure they'll understand.' My husband tried to talk to them and he told me to come down. I went down and said, `I'm sorry that you misunderstood. Maybe you ordered without knowing.' I tried to be logical. I said you can't eat and drink as much as you want. We donate these certificates. We can't afford to give out $110 meals every week.'

"They let me know that they were lawyers. They were, at most, 30 years old. They were very well dressed. They said they didn't have to pay because it said it's worth $30 on the back, not on the front. I said, `It says on the donor form that you got with the certificates that they were worth $30.'

"They said, `We're lawyers and it's not on the front, so we're not paying. We don't have to.'

"One of them told me he was going to sue me. He knew before he came in that he would make a legal issue of it.

"I was intimidated and shocked that it could be a legal thing, and that they insisted they could have all the food and wine they wanted because it says dinner for two.

"Well, dinner for two means you can have an entree, soup or salad and dessert. It's usually so much food that people don't want anything more.

"They told me that I didn't have a leg to stand on in court. They were adamant about the legality of it. I said, `I don't want to pay for a lawyer but I don't want to pay for the rest of your dinner. We can't make you come back and do the dishes because you're not paying.' They laughed at me. I told them: `What does Shakespeare say? "The first thing we do is kill the lawyers.'' ' I didn't know what else to say but `You stuck it to me.'

"They wouldn't give me their names. I said, `I didn't get your names' and they just laughed. They were so arrogant and cold. They thought we wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

"We've been in business here for 25 years and nothing like this has ever happened. I give out 10 of these a week, worth $400. It is how I give to charity. Now I have to get a lawyer to write me up a legal gift certificate so I don't get taken every night?

"Today I called the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and they said they had no record of who these people were.

"Is this what the world is coming to, where you are trying to do something for someone and all they are thinking about is a lawsuit? Now you have to be so careful that you can't give things away to charity for fear of repercussions.''

Then Sara said: "Do you have any suggestions as to what I might do?''

No, but swine like these often brag about their swinishness. So if anyone knows who they are, give me a call at the Trib. I'd really love to interview them about gracious dining.

© 1996 Chicago Tribune