Cescaphe Event Group Refusal to Refund Event Deposits Class Action

Cescaphe Limited, LLC, generally known as Cescaphe Event Group, offers venues, catering, and management of “once-in-a-lifetime” events, such as weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs. Covid-19 restrictions have put a damper on such events, but the complaint for this class action alleges that Cescaphe is “refusing to return deposits for good[s] and/or services it could not provide on a date it guaranteed.”

The class for this action is individuals who entered into agreements or contracts, primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, with Cescaphe, for an event that could not take place on a scheduled date between March 6, 2020 and June 10, 2021, due to Covid-19, legal regulations, health concerns, or guidelines, or an inability to reasonably plan in advance.

Cescaphe appears to have six venues in Philadelphia. Its events require a deposit which its agreements say “guarantees the date of [the] affair.” The agreement attached to the complaint as Exhibit A appears to be for the wedding of the plaintiffs in this case, Molly and Michael Randall. The date of the agreement was November 9, 2018, with the event scheduled for June 12, 2020.

Then came Covid-19. The complaint claims, “Starting in March 2020, the United States government, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the City of Philadelphia[] employed a shut down for all public gatherings indefinitely to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.”

Gatherings of more than ten people were forbidden, and even when not forbidden “were recognized … to be extremely dangerous and were expressly discouraged.” The complaint alleges that the pandemic restrictions in force between March 6, 2020 and June 10, 2021 “made it impossible or illegal to hold affairs like [the Randalls’] on the originally agreed[-]upon dates, which Defendant[] Cescaphe[] had guaranteed.”

On May 5, 2020, the Attorney General for Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, put out a press release entitled “Travel, Event Refund Policies Must Be Honored During Covid-19 Emergency,” which stated, “Businesses cannot legally retain a penalty if an event is cancelled because of Covid-19.” He did note that businesses may “keep a fee for the cost of holding the venue date and planning logistics of the event, if the contract allows.”

The complaint alleges that Cescaphe then “[engaged] in fraudulent and deceptive conduct by misconstruing and misstating the terms of the contracts and claiming that the deposits were not to guarantee the date of the affair but were instead ‘event planning fees’ that it was permitted to keep.”

Even so, the complaint claims, it also tried to pressure customers to reschedule events to a later date, to move their events to other locations (such as backyards), to change weddings to outdoor micro-weddings, and offering them a twenty-four-month credit to apply to a different event at a later date. The complaint alleges that Cescaphe will not return the deposits.

The complaint alleges fraud, recission, and breach of contract, among other things.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Covid-19 Related, Events, Failure To Pay For Refund