Prince Pierre Casiraghi, son of Monaco’s Princess Caroline, is suing Jeffrey Jah over a New York nightclub brawl earlier this year.
Casiraghi, third in line to the throne in the principality, filed the complaint on Saturday in civil court in New York saying that he and three other men were attacked by former restaurateur Adam Hock, 47, at The Double Seven club in the Meat Packing District in February.
The 24-year-old prince, whose Mediterranean country is smaller than New York's Central Park, also accused the club and owner Jeffrey Jah of negligence.
The lawsuit seeking compensation comes months after the prince and three of his friends filed criminal complaints against Hock accusing him of hitting them in the face in a fight that erupted in the club in the early morning hours of February 18.
Casiraghi and the three friends, including Stavros Niarchos, a Greek shipping scion and former boyfriend of hotel heiress Paris Hilton, were drinking with Hock and Jah in the Double Seven's VIP area."On February 18, 2012, plaintiffs were assaulted, struck and attacked by defendant Adam Hock," the complaint said. "Plaintiffs did not consent to the physical contact."Hock's lawyer Sal Strazzullo maintained that Hock had acted in self-defence and that they would respond within a month to the complaint."My client was the one who was attacked by three individuals and we're going to stand by those facts," he said.The prince’s lawsuit says the club should not have served alcohol to Mr Hock and should have known he was “a person of pugilistic propensity”.A lawyer for Double Seven owner Jeffrey Jah said that he “unequivocally disputes” the accusations against him in the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.Mr Jah “intends to vigorously defend against them and is confident that he will ultimately prevail”, said the lawyer, Terrence Oved.Pierre is the youngest of Princess Caroline’s four children. His father, Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi, was Caroline’s second husband and was killed in a boating accident in 1990.Caroline is a sister of Monaco’s ruling sovereign, Prince Albert II.Mr Hock used to be an owner of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone in Times Square.