A lawsuit which was brought against Las Vegas Sands (LVS) in Macau has had its court case postponed by the Court of First Instance for the area, according to a report which was published by Calvinayre.
No new date has yet to be announced. The company will be sued for $12 billion by one of their former business partners. The partner alleges that LVS together with Chief Executive Officer Sheldon Adelson are culpable in pushing the partner out of the way after they helped the casino to make inroads into the gambling hub.
The new date is set to allow LVS significant time to come up with a good defence. The case was expected to initially start on September 12. It however now will not take place for another year and is set to only start around September 16 2020.
Macau Business stated that LVS are being sued by Asian American Entertainment Corporation (AAEC) for damages which arose from their illegal pursuit of a gaming license in Macau almost 20 years ago. During that period, an agreement had been made between the entities to find out the license together and according to AAEC, it had done all the paperwork before LVS backed out of a deal and went with Galaxy Entertainment instead.
Back in 2012, AAEC filed a suit in Macau against LVS after they claimed that it had breached a contract in an effort to try and recuperate its losses and named Venetian Macau Limited (VML). The $371 million claim ended up being denied in court two years later after it was determined that VML should not be included. The lawsuit ended up being rewritten and then resubmitted to include the three entities.
The next year, LVS asked the Court of First Instance to dismiss the claim using the previous court decision as motivation. The court refused to do thus. An appeal to the Court of Second Instance met the same fate. The case was allowed to stand and started seeing more and more activity earlier on during the year. During the month of July, AAEC increased the amount of damages that it wanted and raised a figure of about $12 billion. The amount reflected their loss in profits during the past 14 years.
LVS appealed the sum of money as expected and the Court of First Instance decided to allow the appeal to stand and not be modified.
The latest delay in the case was at the request of AAEC. They would have had quite a bit of time to build up their arguments and the delay will give LVS more time to find additional legal defence.
In their filing, the company stated:
“The Macau Action is in a preliminary stage and management has determined that based on proceedings to date, it is currently unable to determine the probability of the outcome of this matter or the range of reasonably possible loss, if any. The Company intends to defend this matter vigorously.”
It remains to be seen whose side the courts will take.
