On October 24, Nevada U.S. District Judge Miranda Du ruled to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed against some of Las Vegas’ biggest hotel operators, including Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts, which alleged that the companies were violating antitrust laws by conspiring to overcharge for room rates.
Du’s ruling said that the suit suffered from “numerous deficiencies,” including general ambiguity. The plaintiffs now have a 30-day window to re-file an amended suit.
Steve Berman, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told Reuters that he and his colleagues do intend to re-file the suit, and said that he is “confident we can address the court’s concerns.”
The defendants, which also included Treasure Island, Wynn Resorts and the management software provider Cendyn, did not comment on the recent ruling, but all have denied wrongdoing.
According to court filings, the complaint centered around a Cendyn subsidiary known as Rainmaker, a platform that “collects confidential price information from each of the hotel operators, and then tells (operators), through use of various algorithms, how to price.”
Plaintiffs alleged that Rainmaker data was used by operators to “defy supply and demand dynamics” when it came to pricing and vacant rooms.
The lawsuit, which was filed in January, was seeking class action status for consumers who had rented rooms on the Strip from 2019-onwards.
Per Reuters, Du’s ruling said that the suit did not “plausibly allege defendants entered into an agreement,” and did not show that all the named defendants were in fact using the same pricing system.
Therefore, Du wrote, the court “cannot say which pricing algorithms each hotel operator uses, making it impossible to infer that all hotel operators agreed to use the same ones.” Additionally, the suit did not show that operators were under any requirement or obligation to accept the prices that Rainmaker and other software platforms recommended, Du said.
