Drink up A-listers!
An appeals court today overturned a Manhattan judge’s decision to revoke the liquor license at the SoHo club that played host to a bottle-service brawl between Chris Brown and Drake over Rihanna last summer.
The Appellate Division found that Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey Wright’s termination of a booze permit for W.i.P Club in November, 2012 because of fights and drug dealing at the hotspot “was not supported by substantial evidence.”
The judicial panel ruled that the club could not have anticipated the problems because the fights were “sudden or spur of the moment acts of violence committed by club patrons.”
The decision said nothing about the well publicized feud between Rihanna’s lovers or charges that club managers shouldn’t have seated the parties next to one another.
The liquor authority had turned off the spigot at W.i.P. shortly after the June booze brawl, only to have that ruling reversed pending appeals.
Club owner Barry Mullineaux had complained to the Appellate Court that “he’d be out of business” and his 300 employees out of work if the court didn’t return his liquor license.
If W.i.P. closed its doors, “New York will lose a bright night light in its entertainment crown,” Mullineaux said in court papers at the time.
But the liquor authority shot back that the venue was “a drain on police resources and a danger to public health.”
The Appellate Division sent the case back to the lower court to dole out “an appropriate penalty.”
But the legal hits will keep coming for W.i.P– it’s battling least a half dozen civil suits in state court by patrons injured in the big-name brawl.
Reps for the club did not immediately return calls for comment.
The liquor authority also did not respond.
Club reps declined to comment on their upcoming bout.