Slurs ignored, a complaint leaked, then fired in days - the HR failures alleged here
A luxury members' club is facing a lawsuit over racial slurs, an alleged buttocks slap, and a firing four days later.
A former housekeeping manager at Soho House Beach House in Miami Beach is suing the club and its general manager, alleging years of racial harassment, repeated unwelcome sexual touching, and a retaliatory firing that came days after he reported being assaulted by one of his supervisors.
Patrick Drummonds filed his complaint on June 8, 2026 in federal court in the Southern District of Florida. The complaint describes him as a Black man hired as a housekeeping manager around November 2014, and says he was one of only a few Black managers at the property. He is suing Soho House Beach House, LLC and its general manager, Radi Garov, under Title VII, Section 1981, the Florida Civil Rights Act, and Florida common law.
For anyone who runs an HR function, the filing is a study in how complaint-handling can go wrong.
It starts at hiring. The complaint alleges that a former HR manager told Drummonds early on that upper management wanted hiring based on "A CERTAIN LOOK," which the filing says signaled a preference for Caucasian employees, especially in customer-facing roles. Drummonds says he pushed back.
The complaint then alleges open use of racial slurs. It says a purchasing manager repeatedly used the slur "NIGGER" and "NIGG" toward Drummonds, and that an engineering staffer used the same word. Drummonds says he complained verbally and was ignored, then filed formal HR complaints in February 2024 and again in September 2024 — both, the filing says, protected activity that the company never properly investigated.
The complaint also describes three incidents of what it calls unwelcome sexual touching over several years: a guest in the men's locker room in June 2018, a guest at a crowded pool party in November 2023, and, finally, the general manager himself. Drummonds alleges that on December 1, 2024, Garov came up behind him and "forcibly slapped Plaintiff's buttocks with his open, fully extended palm." A housekeeping supervisor allegedly saw it and later confirmed it to the company.
What happened next is the part HR leaders will want to read twice. Drummonds says he reported the December 1 incident that same day to the club's HR manager and HR director. Rather than discipline Garov, he alleges, the company "fabricated complaints about the cleanliness of the hotel" to manufacture a reason to fire him. He says he was terminated — or forced out — on or about December 4, three days later.
The filing adds that the company let his assault complaint leak, after which co-workers allegedly taunted him with the line, "YOU MUST HAVE LIKED THE TOUCHING."
Drummonds filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on February 10, 2025 and received a Notice of Right to Sue dated March 9, 2026, the complaint says. He is seeking back pay, front pay, compensatory and punitive damages, and a court order forcing changes at the club.
The takeaway for HR teams is hard to miss: the case turns less on a single bad actor than on what an employer does after a complaint lands. The allegations here trace a path from an ignored verbal report, to a leaked confidential complaint, to a firing days after an assault claim — the kind of timeline plaintiffs' lawyers build retaliation cases on.
The allegations have not been tested in court. The defendants have not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled.
