Courts | Hao vs LVS trial postponed for one year

CEO and chairman of Las Vegas Sands, Sheldon Adelson

A case in the Macau courts pitting Marshall Hao’s Asian American Entertainment Corporation (AAEC) against the Venetian Macau Ltd. and three U.S.-based subsidiaries of Las Vegas Sands, including LVS (Nevada) International Holdings Inc., Las Vegas Sands LLC, and Venetian Casino Resort LLC, has been postponed for another year. It will resume on September 16, 2020.
The acknowledgment comes from a filing made by the U.S.-based casino group on Friday where Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), the mother company of Macau casino operator Sands China, noted the postponement on its third-quarter results statement.
AAEC, a company led by Taiwan entrepreneur Marshall Hao, is claiming compensation from the alleged breach of a profit-sharing contract with LVS. Hao says he was instrumental in helping the company to acquire a sub-concession in Macau.
The partnership of Las Vegas Sands and AAEC initially submitted a bid for a gaming concession in Macau in 2001, however LVS later switched partners in favor of Galaxy Entertainment Group, which secured a license.
As early as next year, the court will hear the details of the agreement between LVS and Hao, as well as the sum that would have stemmed from the acquisition of the Macau license. As a consequence, it will cover profits from the granting of the concession until mid-2022, when it is due to expire.
In Friday’s statement, the company mentions that the trial, which was originally scheduled for September 11, 2019 at the Court of First Instance (TJB), has been postponed until at least September 16, 2020.
The postponement is explained in the document, which also details all the successive filings, court decisions and appeals made by both sides.
According to the document, on September 26, 2019, the TJB accepted an appeal from LVS regarding an earlier decision to grant AAEC’s request to increase the amount of its claim to a total of $12 billion (MOP96.5 billion).
Since such appeal is currently pending before the Court of Second Instance (TSI), on September 10, 2019, AAEC moved to reschedule the trial which had been scheduled to begin on the next day. The request was granted by the TJB, rescheduling it to the new date in September 2020.
In the document, the company continues to remark the intentions of the company to “defend this matter vigorously,” noting also that the outcome on the matter is impossible to be determined with any degree of certainty.
As the Times previously reported, in early September this year, the TJB ruled in favor of AAEC in a request to have the compensation amount raised.
Hao called for an increase in the amount claimed to a total of around $12 billion in a bid that was considered “acceptable” by the Macau court in light of the arguments presented by AAEC.
The lawsuit has been dragging in the local courts since 2012.