ORLANDO, Fla. (Legal Newsline) - An airborne table at a Las Vegas pool ruined a young man's basketball career, a new lawsuit says.
Sterling Wooten sued Hilton Hotel Company on Feb. 1 in Orange County Circuit Court, alleging his decision to travel to Hilton's Elara Hotel in Las Vegas for his birthday ruined any chance he had of playing professional basketball.
His suit calls Wooten "an elite basketball player" at a Division II university who moved to a junior college to enhance his chances of ending up at a Division I school. Statistics on the LeMoyne-Owen College website show that he played only one minute his freshman season.
He transferred to St. Louis Community College for the 2018-19 season and was a starter. But in June 2019, he was sitting at the pool at the Elara when "an unsecured table structure became airborne and struck the unsuspecting Plaintiff in the back."
The resulting back injury "shall plague Plaintiff for the rest of his life" and will keep him from ever playing professionally, the suit says. Wooten often lists his pain as an eight or nine on a scale to 10, he says.
Wooten's lawyers are David Reiner II of Reiner & Reiner in Miami and Larry Fields of Fields and Associates in St. Louis.