7. Make your best argument for why the country club should be able to hold the waiter liable for the damage to the purse. 8. Make your best argument for why the waiter should be able to hold the country club liable.
A $30,000 Handbag and A Bottle of Wine By Teo Armus November 12, 2019 at 7:17 a.m. EST It all started with a handbag. Maryana Beyder's wasn't just any ordinary bag, though. It was a pink Hermes Kelly clutch, since discontinued by the pricey French fashion house. Beyder's husband had gifted her the purse, worth $30,000, as a 30th birthday present. So after a waiter at a posh New Jersey country club spilled some red wine on the luxury handbag last year, the real estate agent sued for negligence, demanding that the Alpine Country Club pay her the eye-popping price of her spoiled handbag. That lawsuit had already made local headlines, but on Monday, the club in Demarest, N.J., responded with a surprising move of its own: It's now suing its own employee - the waiter who allegedly spilled the wine. Beyder and her husband were enjoying a meal at the clubhouse on Sept. 7, 2018, when a server named in the lawsuit only as "John Doe" approached their table. "Whoever the waiter was proceeded to pour red wine and didn't stop," Beyder's lawyer, Alexandra Errico, told the North Jersey Record. "He poured it all over her. Poured it all over her husband. And poured it all over a very expensive Hermes bag." Initially, her attorney said, she reached out to Alpine Country Club to resolve the matter, but the establishment eventually stopped responding to her complaints. They couldn't comprehend that a bag could be that much. . They kind of discriminated against her that she actually owned that type of bag." Errico told NJ.com. But as she noted to the New York Post, the club is "very, very, very rich." So Beyder sued on Oct. 29 in Bergen County Superior Court. Alpine Country Club, founded in 1928 by a group of civic leaders who called themselves the "forty millionaires," boasts 196 acres of rolling green hills, and an 18-hole golf course. Members of the club pay a $65,000 initiation fee, plus $19,000 in annual dues. "She didn't wear it apple picking. She wore it to a very expensive country club where she was a member," Errico told NJ.com. "If you bring your car to a country club and it gets scratched up, you expect the club to pay for it." In court documents filed Monday, the country club denied it was liable for the damage to her purse. And, it filed a cross-claim against its employee, a legal action in which on defendant sues another in the same proceeding. Errico said she was appalled that the country club has chosen to sue its own waiter. "We were not trying to collect any money from the waiter," she said on Monday. "There was never any intention of my client to go after this person at all. The only intention was to have the employer take responsibility."
