The jury that will decide Elaine Wynn’s civil suit against Wynn Resorts and Steve Wynn will get to hear testimony about her ex-husband’s $7.5 million payoff to a former employee to settle a sexual harassment complaint.
At a hearing last week in state court in Las Vegas, Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ruled the testimony admissible when the two sides square off at a trial scheduled for her courtroom next month.
Elaine Wynn is suing for breach of contract over her dismissal from the Wynn’s board of directors in 2015. She was ousted in the midst of a bitter legal battle with her ex-husband over the rights to her sizable shareholding in the company. The couple’s 2010 divorce settlement forbade either of them from selling any of their stock without the other’s approval, effectively making a joint holding of their combined 21 percent stake with Steve Wynn in voting control.
Elaine Wynn claims the board’s refusal to re-nominate her for a seat stemmed from pressure from her ex-husband, who she says ruled the company with a dictatorial hand, and her repeated exposure of executive misconduct.
Steve Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO last month and later sold off all his stock, representing around 12 percent of Wynn Resorts’ equity, in the wake of a barrage of accusations in the media that he routinely preyed on female employees for sex over the decades when he was building a casino empire that earned him worldwide renown and made him one of the most powerful men in Nevada.
He has denied any misconduct, although his lawyers have acknowledged the $7.5 million payment—made in 2005 to a former Wynn Las Vegas manicurist—and there is evidence that at least one other settlement occurred, although Gonzalez ruled against admitting the second one at the trial.
Elaine Wynn testified to Gonzalez’s satisfaction at a March 28 hearing that she told the board and Wynn General Counsel Kim Sinatra in 2009 that she’d received an e-mail, apparently in reference to the $7.5 million settlement, alleging that Wynn “raped” an employee in 2005. She said Sinatra, after speaking with lawyers, told her it was “not an issue of concern for the company,” that it was a “personal matter,” and that it had been “successfully dealt with privately.”
Her testimony concurs with reports from several current and former employees, first published at length in the Wall Street Journal in January, that high-level executives were complicit in Wynn’s alleged predations and enforced an atmosphere of submission and silence by threatening both victims and those in lower management who attempted to stand up for them with their jobs.
The jury also will hear her claim that certain executives, including former Chief Operating Officer Marc Schorr, engaged in unauthorized offshore gambling.
Schorr, a long-time Wynn executive and close friend of Steve Wynn’s, left the company in 2013.
Gonzalez also is slated to rule on a request by Wynn Resorts and Steve Wynn for a change of venue. They argue that publicity surrounding the sexual harassment issues, together with influence exerted by the national #MeToo movement, have made a fair trial in Las Vegas impossible.
The judge said she will let jury selection proceed for two weeks before making a decision on whether or not to move the trial.
