A claim by the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the Las Vegas Sun has breached a decades-old Joint Operating Agreement can move forward in Clark County District Court, a judge ruled Wednesday.
But the prospects of the claim may depend significantly on another legal matter — a lawsuit filed this week in federal court by the Sun against the R-J.
Clark County District Judge Timothy Williams heard arguments from the legal teams for both newspapers before ruling that the R-J could proceed with its claim that the Sun — which is delivered inside the R-J — is an inferior product and that the JOA, which is set to expire in 2040, should be terminated.
Wednesday’s hearing, which lasted for about an hour at the Regional Justice Center, came a day after the Sun filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging any attempt by the R-J to end the JOA prematurely would be a violation of antitrust laws.
Much of Sun attorney James Pisanelli’s argument before Williams centered on what he said was the need for the matter to be heard in federal court as opposed to state court.
“The Review-Journal’s attempt to terminate this JOA must be scrutinized by the only court that has jurisdiction to do antitrust scrutiny, which is the federal court,” Pisanelli said. “Federal court has exclusive jurisdiction over antitrust laws.”
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The Las Vegas Sun is accusing billionaire Sheldon Adelson of committing a “modern-day smashing of the printing presses” through his purchase of rival newspaper The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Sheldon, 86, is the owner and chairman of the Las Vegas Sands, the world’s largest casino operator. The Sun’s strongly worded Sept. 24 antitrust complaint accuses Sheldon of purchasing the Review-Journal to begin “a systematic silencing of all his local media critics.”
The Review-Journal recently filed a lawsuit against the Sun in a Nevada state court in what the Sun says is a “baseless and unlawful” claim to end a joint operating agreement between the two newspapers. The JOA is the result of a federal law that “provides a limited antitrust exemption for newspapers to combine production, marketing, distribution, and sales, so long as their editorial and reportorial functions are maintained separate and independent,” the complaint said.
The move by the Review-Journal to end the JOA violates federal antitrust law, the complaint filed Sept. 24 by the Sun in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada said.
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A Las Vegas judge has issued a partial preliminary injunction in a drawn-out, hard-fought dispute between marijuana companies and the state, prohibiting certain businesses who won a conditional state license in December from moving forward to open dispensaries.
The decision from Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez on Friday enjoins the state from doing a final inspection on marijuana businesses that did not provide the complete identification of each prospective owner, officer and board member, pending a trial. It wasn’t immediately clear how many businesses are affected by the decision and will be barred from launching operations; a spokesman for the state Department of Taxation could not be reached Friday afternoon.
“The [Department of Taxation] acted beyond its scope of authority when it arbitrarily and capriciously replaced the mandatory requirement of [Ballot Question 2], for the background check of each prospective owner, officer and board member with the 5 percent or greater standard,” Gonzalez wrote about one of the main complaints brought in court — that the application process violated the will of voters.
She found several faults with the state’s process of vetting applications, noting that…
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LAS VEGAS — A judge on Friday froze the permit process for some new Nevada retail cannabis stores, issuing a ruling that sided with companies that lost bids to open recreational pot shops.
Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez issued an injunction halting several dozen new licenses where questions were raised about the owners’ compliance with the licensing requirements.
Losing bidders argued the process was so riddled with mistakes and bias that Gonzalez should void 61 licenses that were approved last December from among 462 applications.
Attorneys for the state and some companies that won retail dispensary licenses say the process wasn’t perfect, but tax officials are fairly enforcing a voter-approved initiative that legalized recreational pot sales to adults.
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Nevada hasn’t given up its fight to try to get the federal government to remove a half-metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium that was secretly sent to the Nevada National Security Site last fall.
The Nevada attorney general’s office on Thursday filed a motion asking the U.S. District Court to allow the state to amend its original complaint to request that the court force the Department of Energy to remove the nuclear material from the Nevada National Security Site.
“Even though the Ninth Circuit recently determined that Nevada’s interlocutory appeal from this court’s preliminary injunction denial was moot, Nevada’s fight to protect its citizens and environment from ongoing harm caused by the Department of Energy’s secret plutonium shipment will continue,” the motion from the attorney general’s office said.
The filing comes two days after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down the state’s initial appeal, in part because the initial complaint in the lawsuit did not ask for the material to be removed. Nevada officials did not know when they filed the lawsuit in November 2018 that the material had already been shipped to Nevada. The federal government did not disclose that fact until January in a court filing.
A Reno federal judge denied the state’s original motion to stop the shipments from coming to Nevada because those shipments had already occurred, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision.
A different federal judge last year ordered the Energy Department to remove one metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. A half-ton was shipped to Nevada last fall, and the Energy Department announced last week that the other half-ton had been shipped to either Texas or New Mexico.
In April, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said that she had struck a deal with Energy Secretary Rick Perry to remove the plutonium from Nevada starting in 2021, and that no additional plutonium would be sent to Nevada.
