Forgive me if the story of Richard Suen and Las Vegas Sands sounds familiar. It probably should. The knock-down litigation has been going on in Nevada courtrooms for more than 14 years.
President George W. Bush was still in his first term on Oct. 15, 2004, the day Suen filed a lawsuit in Clark County District Court against Sands, its Chairman Sheldon Adelson and then-company president William Weidner. Suen alleged the defendants had breached an agreement to pay him a licensing “success fee” of $5 million and 2 percent of the net profits of a Sands Macau casino resort he claimed he’d helped win approval.
Left to right, Richard Suen and Sheldon Adelson
The case proceeded through a withering pretrial process before going to trial. On May 24, 2008, a jury returned a $44 million verdict for Suen. With pre-judgment interest, it climbed to $59 million.
Sands, meanwhile, was fast becoming the envy of the gaming industry for its staggering success in Macau. And while it might have been able to come up with $59 million by gathering its loose change, it appealed the verdict to the Nevada Supreme Court, which in November 2010 reversed the decision and sent the case back to district court for a new trial.
It didn’t come easily, or swiftly. More legal wrangling, including the addition of legal and financial experts, ground the proceedings into the spring of 2013 before the trial began in late March.
The retrial went no better for the casino company, and on May 14 a jury determined Suen’s Round Square company was owed $70 million. Tack on the mounting prejudgment interest, and the figure rose to $102 million.
That summer, the company filed a motion to have the judgment set aside as it sought relief or a new trial. Denied by the district court, Las Vegas Sands filed its notice of appeal to the state supreme court in December. The two parties spent the next year filing briefs before the high court.
After yet more delays, the Nevada justices finally set oral arguments for the last week in January 2016. On March 11, the court affirmed the judgment of liability – but reversed the damages award and ordered a new trial on that issue.
Not that anyone observing the proceedings at that point expected a new trial any time soon. In keeping with the tactics of the legal battle, neither side gave an inch and spent 2016 battling over a proposed rehearing before the high court. In an apparent attempt to move the parties forward, the district court heard further arguments on additional discovery and issued a written order in mid-December 2016.
By this time, not only had Bush the younger served his second term, but the country had gone into and come out of a bruising recession and the Obama era had come and gone.
The company in January 2017 moved to stay the proceedings in district court. The judge denied the motion. At this point, you might imagine there was nothing left to discover in the case, but discovery continued as the judge set the trial for March 4, 2019.
And here we are. Now 85, Adelson has been excused from appearing as a witness due to treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Weidner hasn’t been with the company in ages.
If this were a movie from a generation ago, the pages of a calendar would be scattered to the wind. I was only able to keep track of the dates with the help of the company’s 10-K filing, which devotes quite a few words to the Suen litigation.
Interestingly, it downplays the legal costs of the defense of a case its lost twice.
“The Company has accrued a nominal amount for estimated costs related to this legal matter as of December 31, 2018, the SEC document states. “In the event the Company’s assumptions used to evaluate this matter change in future periods, it may be required to record an additional liability for an adverse outcome.”
In what can only be described as a moment of understatement, the report notes, “The Company intends to defend this matter vigorously.”
Of that, there can be no doubt.
Contact John L. Smith at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith
