Alexis Clemente knew the music was extraordinarily loud at Lavo, the celebrity playpen in Midtown Manhattan where she worked for two years as a hostess.
She could feel the bass thumping in her throat. Cocktail glasses bounced. Heavy vases shimmied along surfaces to the beat. But it was not until last summer, when the club's owners, prompted by an article in The New York Times about dangerous noise levels, had employees' hearing tested, that Ms. Clemente discovered the damage that she said had been wrought.
Ms. Clemente had significant hearing loss in her right ear, most likely caused by noise exposure, an audiologist found. She was told to immediately stop working in loud environments to prevent it from getting worse.
"I was hysterically crying," Ms. Clemente recalled this week. After the test, she told her supervisors about the results, she said, and asked to be placed at the door, slightly removed from the din. But her employers refused, she said, failed to offer her another position, fired her and canceled her health insurance.
This week, she sued. The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, was reported this week by The New York Post.
"I had tremendous gratitude for this job," Ms. Clemente, who is unemployed, said, sitting alongside her lawyer, Russell Moriarty, in the offices of Levine & Blit, at times choking up as she spoke. "All I cared about was sticking with them and working. They went above and beyond to make sure that that didn't happen."
Lavo opened on East 58th Street in 2010, the counterpart to the wildly successful Lavo restaurant and nightclub in Las Vegas, which is owned by the night-life wunderkinder Noah Tepperberg, Jason Strauss, Marc Packer and Richard Wolf. Together and separately, they had birthed some of the country's hottest nightclubs, among them Tao, Avenue and Marquee, alchemizing an alluring combination of models and bottles: the rich, the powerful, the famous; people willing to shell out several thousand dollars to book a table and drink; as well as regular earthlings along for the ride.
For employees, the lucre trickled down. Ms. Clemente's hourly wage was $42, she said, plus tips. Employees had health care coverage and often spent part of the summers in the South of France. The job allowed her to pursue careers in acting and modeling. "People would cut off their arm to work there," she said.
Ms. Clemente's job involved ushering guests downstairs into the pounding club, which sits beneath Lavo's restaurant, at 39 East 58th Street. To protect her hearing, she wore silicone earplugs. But their efficacy was thwarted by the radio headset she wore in one ear, cranked up over the music, to communicate with other workers and handle logistical issues.
She often complained about the noise, she said, but her employers did not take action until last summer, after The Times recorded and reported volumes averaging 96 decibels, akin to a power mower, in Lavo's restaurant. Legally, workers should not be exposed to that volume for over three and a half hours without ear protection. And Lavo employees said the volumes at the downstairs club were far worse.
Lavo began offering its employees earplugs and hearing tests, said Ms. Clemente, who declined to give her age. It was then that she discovered her hearing loss. Initially, she said, one of the club's executives said she could probably work at the door, but she was later told that would not happen. She was also charged retroactively, she said, for additional tests and treatment related to her hearing damage.
David Jaroslawicz, a lawyer who represents Lavo, though not in this case, said there were numerous meetings between Ms. Clemente and the Lavo executives and that she was offered "numerous" positions. "This unfortunately deteriorated to where she decided she was going to take a shot and buy a lottery ticket in the form of a lawsuit," he said.
Because hearing loss is cumulative, proving that Ms. Clemente's hearing damage was caused by working at Lavo will be difficult, several audiologists said. "If she didn't have a hearing test prior to this episode, it's hard to pinpoint that as the cause," said Kevin O'Flaherty, an audiologist at Manhattan Audiological Services.
Yet Ms. Clemente (who sued under her legal name, Margaret Clemente) said she had never been subjected to such loud volumes before working at Lavo. Although she had worked for several years at other nightclubs, she said, she worked at the door, insulated from loud music.
"The only time I've been exposed to this kind of noise was at Lavo," she said. "My hearing was damaged and I was let go."
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