Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Steve Jacobs are still lock in a bitter legal fight, and nobody is giving an inch even after almost six years have passed since Jacobs was dismissed from his post as CEO of Sands China in 2010.
On Tuesday, the Las Vegas-based casino operator renewed its efforts to have Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez kicked off from overseeing a case filed by Jacobs in 2010 on grounds that she has shown “outright hostility” to Sands Corp., Bloomberg Business reported.
This isn’t the first time Sands Corp. called for Gonzalez’s disqualification. In December 2015, the casino operator sought to disqualify the district judge after she made news when the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which was bought by Sheldon Adelson’s family, reported that several of “its reporters had been sent to her courtroom to monitor her as she handled non-newsworthy cases.”
The casino operator claimed Gonzalez “interjected” herself into the media coverage of the Review Journal, but the court’s Chief District Court Judge David Barker denied Sands’ request on grounds that the company was “unpersuasive” in its arguments.
This prompted Sands Corp. to up its game. Now, the casino operator is accusing Gonzalez of having a “complete absence of neutrality,” showing a pattern of “disparate treatment of the parties” and “outright hostility,” among other things, according to the Bloomberg report.
Jacobs was abruptly ousted from his CEO role in July 2010 for still somewhat murky reasons. Since then, the two sides have engaged in a nasty bout of public sniping, paving the way for numerous additional lawsuits for defamation. The former Macau executive claimed he was fired after Adelson “pressured him to use illegal means to gain leverage over government officials in the gambling enclave.”
Recently, Jacobs filed a new case against the Venetian Macau Ltd. in federal court. In the lawsuit, filed on Jan. 29, Jacobs claimed Las Vegas Sands “has attempted to shift liability” in his earlier lawsuits on to Venetian Macau, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
“Because [Las Vegas Sands Corp] has sought to avoid its obligations and wrongdoing by pointing the finger at [Venetian Macau], Jacobs brings this action,” the lawsuit stated, according to the report.
