No compensation for stripper
According to the Bluffton Today The South Carolina Court of Appeals delivered the latest setback to LeAndra Lewis, who was a 19-year-old stripper performing in a Columbia club when she was shot in the abdomen in the course of a fight between customers.
The 2008 shooting seriously damaged Lewis’s intestines, liver, pancreas, kidney and uterus. A workers’ compensation commission denied her benefits, however, because she was not considered an employee of Boom Boom Room Studio 54 in Columbia. Angelica Petrowna- An exclusive interview with a million dollar stripper
So Lewis took her case to the S.C. Court of Appeals, which this month affirmed the workers’ compensation commission’s position against granting her benefits.
During her stripping days, Lewis said would travel between the Carolinas performing five nights a week, making $250- $350 each night.
“The money is actually addictive, honestly, so you want to strive to get more, you know, so you work even harder,” she had testified.
But scarring from her injuries cut her stripping career short, she said.
The court relied on various points to argue that Lewis was not an employee of the Boom Boom Room, including that management never specified how exactly she was to dance in front of the patrons, and that the club hadn’t supplied her with any equipment. X Stripper sues property magnat
“From the standpoint of both the Boom Boom Room and its customers, Lewis brought her own ‘equipment’ for her work,” wrote the court. The decision also noted that the club paid Lewis nothing. It was Lewis who paid for the opportunity to work there as an exotic dancer and collect tips from customers.
In the 2-1 decision Judge Paul Short dissented, arguing that Lewis was an employee of the club, since management could fine or fire strippers who missed their turn in the rotation, or who charged their own V.I.P. dance price, left early, or broke any of its rules.
Author: Saxon
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