Testimony to start in suit for brawl over covid limits

LITTLE ROCK — Opening statements and testimony are set to begin Tuesday morning in a lawsuit filed by a Little Rock couple against a local restaurant in connection with a June 2020 brawl that reputedly broke out over a seating disagreement during the early months of the covid-19 pandemic.

According to allegations contained in the lawsuit, filed by a Black couple — Shayla Hooks and Tyrome Jackson — in 2021, June 27, 2020, while the couple was socially distanced from other patrons at the bar area of the Saltgrass Steakhouse in Little Rock, they were attacked by a group of white tourists from Louisiana that arrived at the restaurant on a tour bus not long after Hooks and Jackson sat down in the bar area. The couple’s complaint said that several members of the group grew angry after Jackson told one member of the group that he and Hooks wished to remain socially distanced from other customers in response to a request to sit next to the couple.

In the ensuing confrontation, which was recorded on cell phone video by a bystander, an unmasked white woman can be seen confronting Hooks and Jackson — both of whom are masked — as Hooks shouts that one of the group spat and coughed on her as another man attempts to keep the two groups separated. Within seconds, the video shows the woman joined by a man who can be heard shouting and cursing the couple. About 38 seconds into the 1 minute video clip, as the man continues shouting and standing within a few inches of the pair, Jackson can be seen hitting the man over the head with a bottle or glass and knocking him to the floor, at which point several other patrons can be seen rushing into the melee.

Hooks and Jackson initially filed a lawsuit naming Landry’s Inc. — the Texas-based parent company of Saltgrass Arkansas Inc. —as the defendant in September 2020 but the next year refiled the lawsuit naming Saltgrass Arkansas as the defendant.

On Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker and the attorneys for both sides questioned a jury pool of 45 people for just under four hours before winnowing the pool down to the 12 jurors who will hear the case. Following jury selection, which concluded about 1:30 p.m., Baker instructed the nine men and three women selected to avoid discussing or researching the case and to return at 9 a.m. Tuesday to hear opening statements, after which attorneys Mike Laux and Austin Porter Jr. will begin their presentation of the plaintiffs’ case.

Saltgrass Arkansas is represented by David Long-Daniels and Allyson Lumpkin of Atlanta, Ga., and by Thomas Hartley Wyatt and Sarah Katherine Calvert of Little Rock.

Hooks and Jackson allege that the restaurant failed to enforce covid-19 regulations in effect at the time, failed to take any action to prevent the confrontation and that during the confrontation, no one employed by the restaurant intervened. The couple are seeking punitive and compensatory damages from the restaurant over charges of negligence, racial discrimination, and defamation.

In October 2021, Saltgrass Arkansas filed an answer denying all of the allegations, saying that as the argument began, the restaurant’s associate manager ordered Hooks and Jackson and everyone from the tour bus to leave the restaurant but was ignored as the argument escalated to the point police were called. But before police arrived, Saltgrass alleged, Jackson struck a person in the other group with a margarita glass, at which point the argument became a physical altercation.

In the resulting fight, Saltgrass alleged, “many guests fled without paying for their meals or ordering any food and the Restaurant suffered physical damage,” and the restaurant accused Hooks and Jackson of attempting, “to profit from a situation of their own making.”

Following opening statements, Laux and Porter will begin presenting their case to the jury.