Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson.
Was billionaire Las Vegas casino executive Sheldon Adelson named as a defendant in a June lawsuit simply to embarrass him with negative publicity?
A federal judge hasn’t ruled on that claim, but nevertheless has dismissed Adelson as a defendant in one of the two overtime lawsuits filed against him and his companies in June.
Despite Friday’s ruling dismissing Adelson personally from the litigation, the suits are proceeding against the corporate defendants — including Las Vegas Sands Corp., where Adelson is chairman and CEO.
Attorneys for Kwame Luangisa, a former personal driver for Adelson mainly in Las Vegas and Mailbu, Calif., contended in one of the suits that Adelson and one of his companies, Interface Operations LLC, and its predecessor AdFam LLC, failed to pay him more than $100,000 in overtime as required by federal law even though he regularly worked seven days a week between 12 and 18 hours per day.
Luangisa said in the lawsuit that he was told he didn’t qualify for overtime pay because he was a salaried supervisor. Attorneys for Adelson and his company have denied the lawsuit allegations.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Jones filed an order dismissing Adelson from the suit after Adelson’s attorneys said the lawsuit failed to show that Adelson personally controlled Luangisa’s daily work duties.
Jones noted in his ruling that under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime claims can only be lodged against an employer, defined as a person or entity that exercises control over the nature and structure of the employment relationship.
"If AdFam and Interface were simply companies created to service the Adelson family, as is likely the case, and if plaintiff’s duties consisted primarily of driving Mr. Adelson at his direction, as he has alleged, then it is possible Mr. Adelson exercised significant or even total control over plaintiff’s driving duties," the judge’s order said. "But plaintiff has so far only alleged Adelson’s supervisory control in conclusory fashion. He must specifically allege how Adelson controlled his daily work duties."
Jones granted Adelson’s dismissal motion, but gave Luangisa’s attorneys an opportunity to amend the lawsuit if they want to bring Adelson back into the case. As of Monday, an amended complaint had not been filed.
Attorneys for Adelson with the Las Vegas office of the law firm Littler Mendelson had complained in their dismissal motion that Adelson was included in the lawsuit only "in an apparent attempt to generate publicity about this case."
They have complained Luangisa’s attorneys included in the lawsuit unnecessary information, including a charge by Luangisa that he resigned in March "following a particularly abusive tirade by Adelson."
Attorneys for Luangisa with the Las Vegas law firm Campbell & Williams, in the meantime, are demanding sanctions against Adelson and his attorneys after the latest in what have been many flare-ups in both lawsuits.
In a Thursday court filing, Campbell & Williams complained about the conduct of Adelson and his attorneys during a deposition that day.
"Sheldon Adelson and his counsel have obstructed Kwame Luangisa’s attempt to conduct discovery at every turn," their court filing said. "Due to the disruptive behavior of Adelson and his attorney Patrick Hicks, plaintiff’s counsel was forced to terminate the deposition after less than 10 minutes of actual testimony."
The court filing claimed Hicks instructed Adelson not to answer questions on grounds of relevancy, that Adelson asserted his own objections and "his counsel engaged in persistent filibustering which was clearly designed to preclude any meaningful examination of the deponent."
Hicks, however, filed his own brief informing the court that he intends to dispute the accusations in yet another forthcoming brief.
Since the filing of the overtime lawsuits on behalf of Luangisa and nine executive security officers for Adelson and his family, attorneys for both sides have battled each other at every turn.
The disputes so far have been over efforts by Las Vegas Sands to seal the security officers’ case because of concerns about Adelson's safety, to reassign the elite officers to mundane security guard jobs and over where Adelson’s deposition would be conducted.
They’ve also been fighting over charges and denials that one of Luangisa’s attorneys had attempted to throw books at Adelson during a deposition from 2006 in another case and over charges that Luangisa’s attorneys provided to a television station a DVD of the confrontation between Adelson and one of the attorneys during that deposition.
Separately, the Culinary Union in Las Vegas said Monday that a court in Britain had dismissed a lawsuit dating to 2004 in which Adelson and Las Vegas Sands claimed they had been defamed by UNITE HERE, parent of the Culinary Union, during a Labour Party meeting in which a union official commented on the Las Vegas casino operator. (During the early 2000s the union tried unsuccessfully to organize Adelson's newly-opened Venetian resort).
The union said the court refused to allow the suit to proceed because of long delays in bringing it to trial and ordered Adelson and Las Vegas Sands to pay its costs, with about $260,000 ordered to be paid soon. The union said Las Vegas Sands has an opportunity to appeal, which the company indicated it may exercise.
"The fact remains that the unions engaged in a campaign to smear the name of Sheldon Adelson and Las Vegas Sands and using the legal remedies we still have before us, we will continue to defend Mr. Adelson and the company from such tactics," Las Vegas Sands said in its own statement Monday.