A United States court has ordered Macau’s biggest casino operator to hand over sensitive documents it has been accused of withholding improperly as part of a wrongful termination lawsuit involving a former senior executive.
Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez also ordered Sands China, which operates the Venetian in Macau, to pay US$250,000 to legal charities and cover significant court costs incurred by Steven Jacobs, the former president of Sands Macau with whom it is in dispute.
Todd Bice, a lawyer for the former executive, said the judge’s order was an attempt to “level the playing field” in the legal tussle.
Sands China said it was disappointed by the court’s decision and did not believe it was supported by the evidence.
Ron Reese, a spokesman for Las Vegas Sands, said: “Sands China intends to seek review from a higher court”, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Gonzalez had previously ruled that Sands China violated her September 2012 order in the case by redacting the various documents.
A Las Vegas judge is mulling what, if any, sanctions to impose on Sands China Ltd. for redacting personal information from documents the company produced out of Macau in January 2013.
District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, who heard nearly five hours of legal arguments on the topic Tuesday, said she plans to issue a written decision by early next week.
The issue of sanctions arose in a 2010 lawsuit filed by Steven Jacobs, the fired former president of Sands Macau. Gonzalez previously ruled that Sands China violated her September 2012 order in the case by redacting documents.
Jacobs’ attorney, Todd Bice, argued that Sands China should not be allowed to benefit from the violation.
“We are here today because of a long series of misrepresentations,” Bice told the judge on Tuesday.
Jacobs sued Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Sands China for breach of contract related to his termination and had asked the defendants to turn over about 100,000 emails and other documents.
In her order, Gonzalez ruled that neither defendant could raise the Macau Personal Data Protection Act as an objection to the disclosure of any documents.
She made the ruling after learning that “significant amounts of data from Macau related to Jacobs was transported to the United States” and reviewed by in-house counsel for Las Vegas Sands and outside counsel. The judge also determined that the transferred data was relevant to the ongoing question of whether the Nevada court has jurisdiction over Sands China.
Sands China Ltd.’s secret investigation of Macau government officials, allegedly ordered by its Chairman Sheldon Adelson, is fair game in the feud between the billionaire and the casino operator’s former top executive.
Steven Jacobs, locked in a four-year battle with Adelson, today won the right to use a report on the probe in his wrongful-termination lawsuit. Jacobs contends he was ousted in 2010 as chief executive officer of the China unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. because he clashed with Adelson over demands he collect information on Macau officials to exert “leverage” on them.
Jacobs claims the report by a Hong Kong risk consultant, and two others on alleged ties between Sands China associates and Chinese organized crime, will expose the company to “serious political and legal problems.” Sands argued that Jacobs “stole” the documents when he was fired, and that they should be legally off-limits for use in the lawsuit.
Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, at a hearing today in Las Vegas, ruled Jacobs can use the reports while ordering that they be treated as confidential information, meaning they may not become public. Sands had asked for them to be treated as highly confidential, meaning only attorneys and the judge could see them.
The first medical marijuana dispensary in Nevada is yet to open, but the lawsuits are already flying as applicants jockey for a starting position in the state’s green gold rush.
GB Sciences Nevada LLC, a company that won city approval for a Las Vegas dispensary but missed the cut on state licensing, has filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s rankings. The state also faces a lawsuit from seven dispensary applicants hoping to open in unincorporated Clark County who gained county approval but not state approval.
Industry observers say the lawsuits won’t stop the medical marijuana boom, but deal a setback that will slow the expansion of the industry at a critical juncture.
Much is at stake for Nevada’s would-be medical pot barons: Entry into the lucrative field is limited and competitive, and the possibility of legalized recreational use could fuel the industry’s future growth.
The Nevada industry’s entry into the courtroom mirrors what has happened elsewhere in the United States as medical marijuana started, including neighboring Arizona.
“My opinion is it’s not good for the industry,” said John Laub, president of the Las Vegas Medical Marijuana Association, of the lawsuits. “I’m not happy with it.”
On Friday, lawyers for the seven applicants who won approval from Clark County but not the state asked a judge to order the state to reconsider.
Todd L. Bice was born and raised in the farming community of Winner, S.D. The town was named Winner because it won a contest to have the railroad pass through town, he said.
Bice went to the University of South Dakota before completing law school at the University of Nebraska. After law school he moved to Las Vegas and began working. Today he is co-founding partner in the law firm of Pisanelli Bice in downtown Las Vegas.
Q. It appears most of your practice is dedicated to commercial, land and zoning, mergers and acquisitions, and gaming. What drew you to focus your career and your practice to these areas?
Our firm is principally and almost exclusively a litigation firm. All those other subject matters that your referencing, we get involved, our firm gets involved in those types of matters when there’s some sort of a contested dispute, whether in court, arbitration, something like that. So that is our exclusive area of practice: litigation or dispute resolution. I ended up in those areas of practice when I moved here (as a young lawyer). I worked for Frank Schreck for nearly 20 years. Frank is probably one of the pre-eminent gaming lawyers in the world. And as a consequence … that’s the sort of work that you just naturally gravitate into because that was the type of work that Frank was bringing to the firm, and bringing to me and others, as young lawyers. So that’s the practice we’d develop and the expertise that we’d develop. So it’s really a byproduct of working for Frank for 20 years.
Q. What does it mean to you to have your firm receive five Tier 1 rankings in the U.S. News-Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms” 2015?
I think its evidence of the type of work that we do and the type of people that we have here. You don’t get those sorts of accomplishments by not doing good work for clients because those (rankings) … are largely a product of client interviews and client assessments. We take a great deal of pride in the fact that our clients think highly of the services that we provide.
