The Wall Street Journal and Sheldon Adelson have settled their differences over the billionaire casino mogul’s alleged bad manners.
A libel lawsuit brought by Adelson against the Journal’s former Asia gaming reporter Kate O’Keefe has been dismissed by agreement of both Adelson and the Journal, the newspaper said.
The terms call for both sides to pay their own legal costs, with no damages, said a spokeswoman for the newspaper, who added that the article that triggered the suit will remain online unchanged.
The article, which ran in the Journal in 2012, described Adelson as “scrappy” and “foul-mouthed” in comparing him to Steven Jacobs, the former head of Sands China who is embroiled in a bitter legal battle with Las Vegas Sands and Adelson over his 2010 firing from the Macau subsidiary.
Adelson, who has said he is not “foul-mouthed,” brought the suit against O’Keefe personally?although the story was co-written with another reporter?and didn’t name either the Journal or publisher Dow Jones & Co. in the action.
The Journal defended O’Keefe, who now covers Chinese money and politics from the paper’s Washington, D.C., bureau.
The suit was brought in Hong Kong, where it’s easier for plaintiffs to win libel cases than in the United States, in part, by putting the burden on defendants to prove the truth of the challenged statement.
The Journal responded with an action in federal court in the U.S. to subpoena witnesses, including executives at Las Vegas Sands and a former bodyguard and driver for Adelson. The Journal also claimed that after Adelson filed the suit a Sands spokesman asked an editor at the paper if O’Keeffe would be removed from the Asia casino beat because, in the spokesman’s view, the legal proceeding meant she had a conflict of interest.
O’Keeffe remained on the beat and was promoted to cover gaming globally.
