Former Morgans Hotel Group CEO Ed Scheetz, whose young girlfriend fatally OD’d in his Las Vegas apartment, has been slammed with a $645 million wrongful-death lawsuit by her family that claims he gave her the cocaine and OxyContin that killed her.
The Las Vegas federal court suit details Scheetz’s alleged cocaine use and extramarital flings with “multiple sexual partners, often at the same time.”
And the suit claims that Scheetz lied to cops when he told them that 23-year-old Michelle Hatchel was still alive as he left his condo to go to work on Aug. 29, 2007.
It says Hatchel called her brother hours before her death to say she was hiding in a closet in the condo, “that she was shocked by [Scheetz’s] excessive drug use and she was scared.”
Scheetz quit as CEO weeks after Hatchel died.
In addition to Scheetz, Morgans Hotel Group, the company that owns the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, is named as a defendant in the suit by Hatchel’s mom, grandmother, brother and aunt. Morgans had no comment.
Scheetz’s lawyer, Stanley Arkin, called the suit “part and parcel of a rather ugly extortion” containing a “lot of made-up accusations.”
“This guy [Scheetz] partied, that’s the extent of it,” Arkin said.
“He never gave her any [OxyContin].”