Two women who say they were sexually assaulted after someone slipped drugs in their drinks at a popular Eugene bar have filed a $5 million lawsuit against the bar’s former ownership -- claiming it knew the bar had an ongoing problem but failed to protect them.

The lawsuit says an employee at Taylor’s Bar & Grill -- situated next to the University of Oregon campus -- might have been working together with customers to doctor women’s drinks, take the incapacitated women off premises and rape or otherwise sexually attack them, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday.

At the time, police had investigated the possibility of a bartender working in concert with customers, the suit says. No charges, however, appear to have been filed against any employees.

On Jan. 19, 2017, the two women who filed this week’s lawsuit say they went to Taylor’s Bar to spend the evening with friends, and soon became disoriented after consuming drinks that had been tainted. A male stranger escorted the women out of the bar -- even though a friend of the women told bar employees that the man shouldn’t be taking the women and that the friend had arranged to take them home, the suit states.

The lawsuit says the women were sexually assaulted at an off-site location.

John Charles Hare, who owned the bar at the time, is listed as a defendant -- along with his company Charles Hare Enterprises. Hare couldn’t be reached for comment Saturday.

The bar changed ownership in May 2017, four months after the women reported being attacked.

A 24-year-old man, Jacobi Broshawn Thornsberry, was convicted of two counts of first-degree rape for attacking one of the plaintiffs and another woman who is not part of the lawsuit. Thornsberry was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison last spring. He is not listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Jacobi Broshawn Thornsberry was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison for raping two women.

The bar is a popular hangout for the university crowd. Last summer, Men’s Health magazine named it one of the “51 Best College Bars in America.”

But that same week, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission sent Taylor’s Bar a letter warning that the commission was moving to revoke its liquor license because of 29 reports of “disturbances, unlawful activities or noise” that indicate “a history of serious and persistent problems" from June 2017 to June 2018. That’s after current ownership took over.

A hearing to air out the case -- and give Taylor’s Bar a chance to dispute the proposed cancellation of its liquor license -- hasn’t been held yet.

Among problems cited by the liquor commission: Three different women said they’d been drugged at the bar and suffered temporary memory loss from it in September 2017, October 2017 and April 2018.

According to a 2018 story in The Register Guard, as many as 10 women had reported being drugged at the bar in the previous two years. That includes four women who told police that they had ordered drinks from a Taylor’s bartender and then blacked out in 2016, according to the story.

The lawsuit alleges that the bar “facilitated rather than” protected against the druggings by allowing security cameras inside the bar to be turned toward the ceiling; “by allowing obviously incapacitated women to be carried or escorted away from the bar by unknown males;” by failing to warn female customers that it had an ongoing problem with druggings; and by failing to provide female customers with “commercially available coasters that test whether a drink has been drugged.”

The suit seeks $2.5 million each for the two plaintiffs.

“Taylor’s profited from the niche market of serving excessive amounts of alcohol to young persons in a chaotic, loud, and dark bar environment,” reads the lawsuit.

“Because (the bar’s ownership) did not protect against the above-described predatory activity, multiple, unsuspecting female patrons have been drugged at the bar and taken from the bar and sexually assaulted," the lawsuit says.

The suit was filed in Lane County Circuit Court. Eugene attorneys Travis Eiva, Erin Zemper and Jennifer Middleton are representing the plaintiffs.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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