A dispute among the owners of The Sun Trapp, one of Salt Lake City’s most prominent LGBTQ bars, came to a head this week — with the majority owner filing a lawsuit against a minority shareholder.
The company that owns The Sun Trapp, FChugg Inc., which is controlled by the bar’s alleged majority owner Riley Richter, filed the lawsuit in Utah’s 3rd District Court on Wednesday against Michael Goulding, who holds a 40% share of FChugg. Three former bar employees also are named as defendants.
The lawsuit accuses Goulding and the three ex-employees of “numerous actions that are not only unauthorized but which also have harmed the business and which exposed it to potential irreparable harm relating to the loss of its liquor license.”
The Sun Trapp — located at 102 S. 600 West, near The Gateway — has been closed since Jan. 11, according to the bar’s website, because of the dispute. The bar has been is business since 1991.
In the complaint, FChugg accuses Goulding of taking a paycheck without doing any work, trying to remove funds from the company’s bank accounts and trying to rehire the three ex-employees — identified as Haley Jones, Trapper Geary and Michael Smith — without being authorized by Richter, who owns 60% of the company, or Donald Neeley, the bar’s longtime manager.
Because of Goulding’s alleged attempt to take the business’s money, the complaint states, Richter and Neeley changed the locks on the bar’s doors just before Richter and his husband, Michael Repp, left the country on vacation.
Shortly after that, FChugg argues in the complaint, Goulding and the three ex-employees “showed up at the bar and declared themselves to be in charge.” Goulding claimed that he had fired Neeley and Repp (who is a bar employee), and rehired the three former employees — a move later flagged by FChugg’s accountant.
Any employee who “did not follow their demands regarding their employment and treat them as the managers and persons in charge” was told they would be fired, FChugg alleges in the complaint.
When the “authorized” employees locked up the bar on Jan. 9, FChugg argues in the complaint, the defendants came back that night and drilled through the new locks.
On Jan. 22 — 11 days after Richter closed The Sun Trapp — the defendants started remodeling the bar without permission, according to the lawsuit.
The lawyer representing Goulding, Jones and Geary did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon from The Salt Lake Tribune.
“The law has pretty clear rules about how businesses are governed by officers and members of the board of directors, and sometimes those lines get blurred,” Sarah Spencer, the lawyer representing FChugg in the lawsuit, said Thursday.
“There’s been an issue there with people in the business, asserting they have the right to act on behalf of the company when they don’t. And that’s what the lawsuit is about,” Spencer said. “And it’s important for FChugg to take these measures because of the very fact that it wants to remain open; it wants to serve the LGBTQ community and the Salt Lake City community.”
None of the defendants named in the lawsuit had filed a response as of Friday morning.
