Family members of a Kroger real estate executive who died following an altercation at Shotgun Willie’s in 2019 say the Glendale strip club’s recent bankruptcy filing “is an attempt to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a smokescreen to limit the debtor’s liability in six pending lawsuits,” the Denver Post reported. “The truth is that the debtor is a profitable company that will likely recover quickly from the pandemic and has the financial wherewithal to provide a significantly higher return to unsecured creditors,” the surviving wife and children of Randall Wright wrote in a March 24 court filing. Wright was 48 when he died in May 2019 after being put into a chokehold by a bartender at the club, according to a wrongful death lawsuit his family filed five months later. The local district attorney’s office announced in September 2019 that it would not file charges in connection with the incident, citing multiple factors. The club disclosed the family’s lawsuit and others pending against it when it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. In a statement to BusinessDen at the time, Shotgun Willie’s attributed the filing to the pandemic, noting the club was prohibited from operating for weeks in the spring, and again around the time of the filing.
