A Latina actress who alleges she was ousted from the Beverly Hilton after the 2014 Golden Globes ceremony due to her race, then defamed on Facebook, must shore up her complaint if she wants to move forward with all her allegations, a judge said Monday.
Ruling on a motion brought by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and Dick Clark Productions, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Josh Fredericks said he did not believe there were enough facts showing Dyana Ortelli was subjected to intentional infliction of emotional distress or that her civil rights were violated by being ejected.
“I just think this court has a hard time seeing this as outrageous,” Fredericks said.
He also said the complaint did not adequately show how Ortelli’s civil rights were infringed upon by being asked to leave the hotel, which she is also named as a defendant. He gave her attorney, Vincent Miller, 10 working days to file a revised complaint.
Miller alleges in court papers that Ortelli was racially profiled and harassed.
Attorney Steven Rodriguez, on behalf of the HFPA and Dick Clark Productions, urged that both allegations be dismissed, arguing there was nothing in the complaint to support either claim.
Ruling on a separate motion brought by attorneys for the Beverly Hilton, Fredericks denied motions to dismiss Ortelli’s causes of action for defamation, false light invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress, which she alleges she suffered after the hotel’s public relations manager issued a statement about the incident on its Facebook page.
Ortelli, who had roles in the films “La Bamba” and “Three Amigos!” and co-hosts the Los Angeles talk show “Hola LA!”, says in her suit that she has been invited to the HFPA’s Golden Globes ceremony every year since 1989.
According to the lawsuit filed Jan. 9, Ortelli attended the awards ceremony on Jan. 12, 2014, with HFPA member Noel de Souza. When de Souza and her other companions decided to attend an after-party, she told them she would wait for them in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton because she was ill, according to her court papers.
Ortelli says she received a message from one of her companions that they were on their way to meet her and to stay in the hotel.
When a security guard asked Ortelli what she was doing there, she told him she was an invited guest and the host of “Hola LA!,” and the guard laughed, the suit states.
Ortelli says she asked to speak with the hotel manager, who walked away after she gave the woman her business card.
Four Beverly Hills policemen subsequently arrived and escorted Ortelli out a rear door of the hotel “into the cold, without a coat, late at night, into the streets,” according to her court papers.
The suit alleges the hotel’s Facebook page defamed Ortelli by falsely stating she “did not have the proper credentials to be on (the) property for the evening’s events … after being given ample time to do so.”
Hotel attorney Joseph Cheung told the judge that Ortelli started a “Facebook war” by posting her allegations of racism. He said the hotel responded with a “bland, innocuous” response on its Facebook page.
“It’s a very benign statement saying, ‘We’re not racists, this is what happened,”‘ Cheung said.
Cheung also said the hotel employees wanted to protect the large number of celebrities inside the hotel at the party and were concerned because Ortelli could not show them a credential.
Fredericks countered that Ortelli gave the hotel management other proper identification and that they could have checked for her name on the computer data base.
Miller said the hotel’s Facebook posting remained up for two months until he wrote a letter demanding its removal.
—Staff and wire reports