28-Dec-14 – Once again, the lawsuit filed by an Air India pilot against the owner and operator of the Wyndham Grand Riverfront Hotel will remain in federal court. (Left) Wyndham Grand Riverfront Hotel on July 11, 2014.

A United States District Judge has denied Pankul Mathur’s second request to dismiss his case and remand it back to Cook County Circuit Court. That is where he originally filed his complaint on July 16, 2013, against Hospitality Properties Trust, a real estate investment trust that owns the hotel, and Wyndham Hotel Management, Inc.

Since Hospitality Properties Trust is located in Massachusetts, Wyndham is a Delaware corporation, and Mathur (right) is a citizen of India, HPT got the case moved to federal court on October 8, 2013.

Mathur’s first request to remand, filed on October 25, 2013, was based on his argument that HPT’s state of citizenship was not specified in the October 8 motion. His request was denied on March 31, 2014, but Mathur tried again on August 15, 2014.

Three days later, HPT filed a document specifying the U.S. states in which its five trustees are citizens but Mathur argued the information was incomplete and delivered too late.

However, in her order dated December 8, District Judge Sharon Coleman (left) noted that Mathur and the defendants he is suing are in different states and the case can be tried in federal court.

Mathur claims that on April 15, 2013, he was asleep in room 1507 of what was then Hotel 71, when a large African-American woman banged on his door and robbed him when he opened it. His pleas for help, he says, were ignored by hotel employees and the woman escaped but not before telling a hotel housekeeper that Mathur “called me for prostitution and was not paying so I am just taking his money.”

A status hearing is scheduled for February 12, 2015.