Sex shop owner facing court decisions, says litigation “part of the business model”

A controversial adult novelty franchise continues to operate two sex shops in Cobb County several months after its business licenses were revoked.

While a court decision could be coming next month for the East Cobb location of Tokyo Valentino, the owner is fighting in court to keep it and a second store in Marietta open. Owner Michael Morrison said this week that the court battles come with the territory for his retail operations.

“I think like any controversial business — whether it’s this, or gentlemen’s clubs or marijuana stores — part of the business model is you have to fight some of this litigation,” Morrison told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I think it gets us a lot of publicity, which always helps. But really it hurts the customer because all these fees get passed on in higher prices to the consumer.”

Tokyo Valentino operates six different adult novelty establishments throughout the metro area. It has two locations in Atlanta as well as shops in Sandy Springs and Gwinnett County. Tokyo Valentino has a decades-long track record of suing municipalities for the right to operate, despite pushback from residents and elected officials.

“This is what happens all the time. They react after the fact,” Morrison said. “We’ve been doing this since 1995. We’ve seen situations like this where they change rules to accomplish their own purposes.”

Tokyo Valentino’s legal woes in Cobb County began almost a year ago, when Marietta’s City Council in July revoked its business license at 345 Cobb Parkway South. In October, Cobb County commissioners followed suit and revoked Tokyo Valentino’s license at 1290 Johnson Ferry Road.

Both stores are still open for business pending the outcome of legal wrangling. One of the court cases may soon be coming to an end. Superior Court Judge LaTain Kelly is slated to hear Cobb County’s complaint against Tokyo Valentino at 9 :30 a.m., July 13.

The county will be asking Kelly to uphold its October decision and impose an injunction that forces the East Cobb location of Tokyo Valentino to stop operating without an appropriate business license.

Attorneys for Tokyo Valentino claim the county had no regulations that specifically prohibited the store from selling sex toys when it opened in June 2020. Morrison insists he was well within his rights to sell nothing but adult oriented merchandise, according to Cobb County laws at the time.

Marietta City Council and Cobb County’s Board of Commissioners both ruled that owners misrepresented Tokyo Valentino’s product line when they applied for business permits. Both governments determined the stores didn’t have an adult entertainment license allowing them to legally sell sexually oriented merchandise.

Daniel Aaronson, an attorney for Tokyo Valentino, called that allegation “disturbing.” He reiterated Morrison’s claim that Cobb County had no restrictions to stop the store from selling sex products until Sept. 8, when commissioners changed the county’s ordinances to crack down on erotic shops like Tokyo Valentino.

“It did not matter what the retail mix was, we would not have been considered an adult (business) under the code at the time,” he told the AJC on Thursday. “Whether or not we had products that would now be considered adult is irrelevant.”

Cobb County filed a Nov. 29 complaint in Superior Court seeking an injunction to close the Johnson Ferry Road store. County officials alleged in court filings that over 30,000 sex toys, lubricants and smoking products were stockpiled in the East Cobb location. According to the county’s complaints, erotic goods made up 70% of the store’s inventory, which is a violation of the business license.

Morrison said he originally planned for the East Cobb shop to be a dancewear store, but the pandemic forced him to change that plan. “There were no live events to support music so it made no sense to open up a store selling outfits for concerts,” he said.

Cobb County attorneys handling the case declined to comment this week, citing the ongoing litigation.

Meanwhile, Marietta is awaiting a ruling on its court petition to shutter the sex shop’s locale in that city. Marietta councilmembers revoked the store’s license July 15. In response, Tokyo Valentino filed a petition in Superior Court on Aug. 7 asking a judge to overturn the city’s decision.

In a Sept. 3 counterclaim, the city argued that Tokyo Valentino was not allowed to sell the “massive amount of pornography” that was found in the shop. Marietta business inspectors estimated that sexually oriented products made up 80-90% of the merchandise on the shelves.

Marietta City Attorney Douglas Haynie said the case remained in limbo for a “significant amount of time” while the courts were closed during the pandemic. It remains pending in Cobb County Superior Court.

Morrison claims the city didn’t crack down until he opened the East Cobb store last year and public pressure began to mount there.

“I think this was driven by a bunch of soccer moms in the neighborhood,” Morrison said, later adding, “When we first opened up, they (City of Marietta) knew exactly what we were and there was no problem until we opened the store in East Cobb. Now all of a sudden, they want to change their argument and say they had no idea what our stores sell or what we represented.”

Morrison’s ongoing court battles are not limited to Cobb. The city of Atlanta has tried for years to shut down Tokyo Valentino’s flagship shop on Cheshire Bridge Road to no avail.

In July 2016, Gwinnett County filed for an injunction against the Tokyo Valentino along Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth. That case is still pending, court records show.

In 2020, a DeKalb County magistrate judge ordered Stardust, a sex toy shop that Morrison owns in Brookhaven, to close unless it paid the city over $800,000 in fines. The judge also found Morrison in contempt and sentenced him to 180 days in jail. Morrison appealed that ruling and said Tuesday it’s under review by the Georgia Supreme Court.