Sour Grapes

This is just too, too much. Read and weep:

A Plaza-hotel-loving couple from New Jersey says the romantic landmark broke their hearts when it canceled their daughter's bas mitzvah, never telling them about a massive renovation that began in the spring.

Dr. D. Scott Alenick and his wife, Suzanne — who were married at The Plaza — sued the storied hotel this week, claiming they were victims of fraud and deceptive business practices.
"We approached this bas mitzvah as an opportunity to share with our daughter a great tradition," said Suzanne Alenick, a Manhattan attorney who had her own bas mitzvah at The Plaza in 1975 and planned to hold Ashley's 12th-birthday celebration there.

Alenick said she was "sickened" when told the ceremony, scheduled for May 22 of this year, would have to be scrapped — after she had paid $12,000 of the $20,000 bill and sent out invitations to 100 guests.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime event," she said. "Everything was ready to go."

Apparently, the family has a long history of celebrating milestones at the luxury New York City institution. All well and good. Except that they were informed of the cancellation of the event due to the planned construction project six months in advance. I think that should have been plenty of time to source a new location for the Bat Mitzvah party. Especially since according to the couple's own admission, the hotel "accepted a deposit from her just days before canceling the event Nov. 29, 2004". The hotel refunded the full deposit as soon as they informed the Alenick's of the cancellation, which was only a few days after the event had been booked. The couple claimed to have already sent out invitations, and the Plaza reimbursed them in full for the cost of the invitations.

That should have been the end of the story. Instead, the couple is looking to make this into a windfall:

The suit seeks unspecified damages for "humiliation, indignity, distress of mind and mental suffering."

"They made no effort to compensate for the uniqueness of The Plaza," said Suzanne.

Now if the Plaza was unavailable for the Bat Mitzvah, it was unavailable, right? Lets posit that the Alenicks had called the Plaza a few days later, after the renovations were set in stone, and had been turned down for the event at the pass. Would they still have looked for the Plaza to compensate them for denying them the "uniqueness of the Plaza"? Sometimes this absurd a level of litigiousness is just due to a mammoth case of sour grapes. I hope the judge that gets this case doesn't entertain what I see as a colossal temper tantrum by the Alenicks.