Las Vegas, NV – A Hong Kong businessman who claims Las Vegas Sands Corp. owed him $347 million for helping the company gain access to Macau’s lucrative gambling market reached a confidential settlement with the casino chain on Thursday in Nevada state court.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed when Clark County Circuit Court Judge Rob Bare dismissed the jury. The previous day attorneys for plaintiff Richard Suen and LVS delivered their opening statements in a trial that had been slated to run through March.
The trial would have featured testimony from LVS CEO Sheldon Adelson, however Judge Bare ruled Adelson’s ongoing cancer treatments would prevent him from participating. LVS argued Suen only deserved $3.8 million for helping LVS expand into Macau, a Chinese territory near Hong Kong, in the early 2000’s.
Representatives for the parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thursday’s settlement marked an end to long-running litigation that saw two previous jury verdicts thrown out by appeals courts. An initial trial in 2008 resulted in a $43.8 million verdict for Suen, and another in 2013 (also recorded by CVN and available to subscribers) ended in a $70 million award that later grew to more than $100 million with interest.
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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s latest bid to block incoming shipments of weapons-grade plutonium points to the U.S. Energy Department’s own scientific warnings about the dangers of prematurely moving the highly radioactive material out of South Carolina.
State lawyers say in briefs filed this week with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the Trump administration is engaged in a clandestine “charade” intended to turn Nevada “into the nation’s radioactive dump.”
They want the San Francisco-based court to overturn a Reno judge’s refusal to temporarily halt all plutonium shipments to a site near Las Vegas.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du denied the request Jan. 30, saying any potential harm was speculative. That was the same day the government revealed it secretly shipped a half metric ton (1,102 pounds) of plutonium from South Carolina to Nevada sometime before Nov. 30.
Nevada lawyers said in Monday’s filing that the “stealth” truck shipment increased residents’ radiation exposure equivalent to getting 100 to 200 chest X-rays annually for three years.
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Two years after a wrenching hearing on a possible death penalty ban, and just weeks after an inmate who was stymied in his quest to die at the hands of the state took his own life, Nevada lawmakers are once again grappling with ending capital punishment.
Democratic Assemblyman Ozzie Fumo and Democratic state Sen. James Ohrenschall are sponsoring AB149, which seeks to abolish the death penalty, and the Senate introduced a second such bill from the pair — SB246, which strikes language allowing the death penalty for first-degree murder — on Friday.
Nevada has not executed someone since 2006, even though there are 77 people on death row, largely because condemned inmates are entitled to what often becomes decades of appeals.
“We need to get that conversation started,” said Fumo, a criminal defense attorney. “There’s a misconception out there about what the death penalty means. I think most people in favor of it think when you get the death penalty, you’re executed within a year. And when they find out that Nevada just doesn’t do it, they change.”
The bills come against the backdrop of the case of Scott Dozier, who was convicted of two murders in the early 2000s and later opted to give up any further appeals of his death sentence. He was twice scheduled for execution and it was twice postponed over legal issues — first over concern about the humaneness of an untried lethal injection combination and later when drugmaker Alvogen objected to its product being used to kill someone.
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Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson is suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma but plans to continue working through treatment.
In a statement issued late Thursday, the company……We hope you’re enjoying our content. Subscribe today to continue reading this story, and all of our stories, for just 99 cents.
Case complicated
The disclosure comes just ahead of a civil trial scheduled to begin Monday in Las Vegas.
Attorneys for a Hong Kong businessman waging a 15-year legal battle with Sands are asking a Clark County District Court judge to turn down a request that Adelson be excused from testimony.
Attorneys for Richard Suen and Round Square Company Ltd. filed a motion Feb. 22 and appeared at a hearing before Judge Rob Bare on Monday arguing Adelson should be required to testify or appear for a deposition.
Adelson testified in court in 2001 that he suffers from lumbar plexopathy, a disorder that causes severe pain along his side and hip area. He also testified that medication he uses to manage pain often makes him drowsy. He uses a motorized scooter to stay mobile.
It’s the third time since 2004 that Suen is facing off with Sands in court over claims that he provided Adelson with information and support to win a coveted concession in Macau in the early 2000s.
Clark County juries twice found in favor of Suen. In 2008, he was awarded $43.8 million, but the Nevada Supreme Court vacated the verdict in 2010 because of the amount of hearsay evidence Suen’s attorneys put into the record.
In 2013, another jury awarded Suen $70 million. However, in March 2016, the state Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in favor of Suen while reversing the jury’s decision on damages.
Las Vegas Sands has become a leader in the Macau market, building Sands Macao, The Venetian Macao, Sands Cotai Central (comprised of several hotel brands) and Parisian Macao. The company is converting some of its Cotai Strip developments into the Londoner, a British-themed resort concept.
No SEC filing
In their Feb. 22 motion, attorneys James Pisanelli and Todd Bice argued Adelson should be required to appear, particularly if he is healthy enough to run a publicly-traded company.
Sands officials have said Adelson has not been in the office since around Christmas. The company has not made any SEC filings regarding Adelson’s health.
He did not participate in the company’s Jan. 23 fourth-quarter earnings conference call. At the time, Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein told analysts listening to the call that Adelson was “under the weather.”
Judgment call
In Suen’s court filing, attorneys argue Adelson should testify, citing what a letter from Adelson’s doctor doesn’t say.
“It does not say that Adelson is incapable of serving in his capacity as chairman and CEO of a publicly-traded company,” the opposition motion says. “It does not say that there are any restrictions upon him traveling. It does not say that there are any restrictions on him holding meetings. It does not say that there are any restrictions upon him making business decisions, decisions that, at his level, can impact the lives of thousands of employees and shareholders.”
In a transcript of Monday’s proceedings before Bare, Sands attorney Richard Sauber said the company has no expectation that Adelson would be a witness in the trial.
Benjamin Edwards, an associate professor at UNLV’s Boyd Law School, said the company is not required to make an SEC filing for health concerns. Edwards said the level of public disclosure is a corporate board judgment call.
“If a CEO has a colonoscopy and it reveals some troubling information, there’s no automatic disclosure requirement to the market,” Edwards said. “A corporate executive can consult with their physician about how to deal with any health challenge without it immediately being something that they have to disclose to their board of directors and to their shareholders.”
Questions have been raised about the health of Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson as the start date looms for a trial in Clark County District Court that could cost the company millions of dollars in damages.
It is unclear whether Adelson, 85, will be able to testify in the civil lawsuit brought by Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen, who has been seeking compensation from the gaming giant since 2004 over the assistance he claims to have provided Adelson and the company in landing a lucrative concession to operate casinos in Macau in the early 2000s.
Adelson, who is the largest shareholder in Las Vegas Sands, missed the company’s fourth quarter earnings conference call with analysts on Jan. 23 because he was “a little bit under the weather,” Las Vegas Sands President Rob Goldstein said at the call’s outset. A gaming source said Adelson did not attend nor participate in the company’s January board meeting associated with the call.
But comments made in open court ahead of the Suen case paint a different picture.
On Monday, during a hearing on whether Adelson would have to sit for a deposition, Las Vegas lawyer Jim Jimmerson, one of the attorneys representing Las Vegas Sands, told District Judge Rob Bare that the CEO hasn’t been seen at the company’s corporate offices since Christmas.
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