FECES IN THE NEWS: BETTER CHECK THOSE SHEETS!

Snave's note: What happens in Vegas doesn't necessarily stay in Vegas!

Lawsuit Claims Human Feces Found in Circus Circus Casino Hotel Bed

By Andrea Uhde
The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Jul. 9, 2004 (Reuters)

A Virginia Beach man claims in a lawsuit that his Las Vegas honeymoon was ruined when he found a pile of human feces in his hotel bed.

Milciades M. "Mikey" Cedano Jr. filed a complaint last week in Clark County, Nev., saying that he got in bed late one night in January at the Circus Circus casino hotel and made the foul discovery.

His suit says hotel employees considered the situation to be a joke and that the incident caused emotional stress that has forced him to seek therapy.

Cedano is suing the parent company of Circus Circus, Mandalay Resort Group.

His suit seeks at least $40,000 in damages, but he said in an interview that he wants at least $100,000.

Cedano and his wife, LaVett Brown-Cedano, were married in 1997 and took a belated honeymoon the week of Jan. 22. On their last day in town, they arrived at their suite at midnight.

Cedano, worn out after several nights of playing craps, said he scooted into the sheets and caught a whiff of strong odor.

"Oh, God, I know that's not what I think it is," he recalls thinking. He said he jumped out of bed, screaming, and turned on the lights. He said his face was covered with feces.

He said he immediately called for a hotel supervisor. That individual and others "acted as if the whole incident was funny, further demeaning, humiliating and injuring the Plaintiffs," according to the lawsuit. The suit also says that hotel employees began referring to the suite as "the brown room."

That morning, the couple returned to Virginia. But Cedano said he was sick for weeks.

"I was throwing up," he said. "I was so sick, because I kept thinking about somebody else's feces on my face."

Barry Levinson, Cedano's attorney in Las Vegas, wrote in the complaint that hotel workers might say that the couple staged the incident. "This attitude only adds to Plaintiff's damages," he wrote.

Levinson took a light-hearted approach to the complaint, peppering it with defecation jokes. "It's so bad and outrageous that you have to make light of it," he said in an interview.

Levinson sought publicity for the case through a news release, and Las Vegas papers have reported on the suit.

Cedano, 32, is an assistant manager for one of the Lowe's home improvement stores in Hampton Roads. He said co-workers have called him rude names and that he has visited a psychologist for five sessions because of the incident.

Circus Circus has about 3,700 rooms and is on the north end of the Las Vegas strip. Officials at the hotel and the parent company either would not comment on the pending lawsuit or could not be reached for comment.

Cedano and his wife said they will not return to Las Vegas.

"This was our first honeymoon we'd been waiting for so long to take," he said. "And it turned out to be a horrible one."