Judge fines Las Vegas Sands $25,000 for failing to disclose information in lawsuit

A state judge on Friday fined Las Vegas Sands Corp. $25,000 for failing to disclose that key information in a fired executive’s lawsuit had been transferred from China to the United States.

Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez wrote in a ruling that Sands’ failure to disclose to her and attorneys for the fired executive, Steven Jacobs, that the information was in the United States appeared to be an effort to stall progress in the lawsuit.

After Jacobs was fired as CEO of Sands China Ltd., the Sands subsidiary with extensive casino holdings in Macau, he filed suit claiming he had been deprived of valuable stock options and that he was let go for opposing company demands that he engage in improper conduct.

Sands denied the charges and said he was fired for cause.

As the Las Vegas lawsuit progressed, Sands attorneys repeatedly told the judge that key information remained in Macau and its transfer to Nevada was being held up by the Macau Personal Data Privacy Act.

Those representations were false, Gonzalez wrote in her order, which said that because of those false claims, she held nine unnecessary hearings in the case between May 2011 and May 2012.

“Given the number of occasions the Macau Personal Data Privacy Act and the production of ESI (electronic information like emails) by defendants was discussed, there can be no other conclusions than that the conduct was repetitive and abusive,” she wrote in her order.

Gonzalez said key information had been moved to Las Vegas as early as August 2010, even before Jacobs filed suit, but that this wasn’t disclosed to her until June of this year.

She ordered Las Vegas Sands to make a $25,000 donation to the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada and to cover Jacobs’ attorney’s fees related to hearings she held on the sanctions issue.

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