Hong Kong businessman Richard Suen was awarded US$1.03 million by a Las Vegas court this week to cover expenses for his successful legal fight against Las Vegas Sands over the casino giant’s Macau gaming concession.
The amount is 10% less than he requested for the six-week trial that ended in May but far more than the 90% discount requested by Sands.
In his ruling, which was covered by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Clark County District Judge Rob Bare praised Mr Suen’s legal team for the “professional, high-caliber” manner in which it presented evidence and endorsed the computer graphics and document management that have become increasingly common in complex trials, particularly those involving business litigation.
Slightly more than half of Suen’s bill, $593,000 out of $1.17 million, was for slides that helped explain his case and the cost of hiring a technician to ensure hundreds of pieces of evidence popped up on big-screen monitors on cue. The judge also OK’d thousands more for videotaped depositions and for synchronizing the written version with the voice, similar to movie subtitles.
“I think members of a jury, most likely, are going to respect a more high-tech approach,” Mr Bare said. “I think they will connect with it.”
The fact that Mr Suen also faced a major challenge in trying to prove a $328 million claim against a major player on the Las Vegas Strip and its prominent chairman and CEO, Sheldon Adelson, added more justification to spending so much, the judge said.
A Las Vegas jury awarded Mr Suen $70 million for his work in helping LVS obtain its lucrative gaming license in booming Macau. Including interest, the total award came to $101.6 million and has been growing since the verdict was delivered at a rate of $8,400 a day.
With the ruling on the expenses, Sands now has the go-ahead to launch an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, and the company has hired an appellate attorney, the Review-Journal said.
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