Wynn Resorts is suing the ex-wife of Chairman and CEO Steve Wynn for secretly letting her lawyers copy company computer hard drives in her battle to nullify an agreement that ties up her billion stake in the gaming giant.
Papers filed in Nevada state court accuse Elaine Wynn, at one time a member of the Wynn board, of breaching her contract and fiduciary duties and seeks punitive damages against her.
The suit is part of a three-way battle dating back several years between Wynn, his ex-wife and Wynn Resorts co-founder Kazuo Okada over the future of their respective holdings in the company. The fight started when Wynn Resorts accused Okada of bribing casino regulators and other officials in the Philippines, where the Japanese machine gaming magnate is developing a resort casino. A company investigation resulted in Okada’s expulsion him from the board of directors and a forced redemption of his 20 percent shareholding. The conflict escalated last year when Elaine Wynn, after losing her seat on the board, brought in new lawyers to fight her case for her shares.
Wynn claims she has unauthorized access to privileged in-house information obtained by her former counsel, the Los Angeles law firm of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which made copies of work files taken in 2013 from both her computer and her assistant’s by her previous lawyers, Munger, Tolles & Olson, also based in Los Angeles.
James M. Cole, a lawyer for Elaine Wynn, said she was acting under advice of her lawyers, who were working with the company’s own attorneys at the time.
“I relied on their counsel to follow their directions,” she has testified. “And they wished to image my computer, and so I cooperated with that request.”
Under questioning by a lawyer for Wynn Resorts she said she never told the company that her lawyers had taken the information.
“Whether Elaine and her agents covertly accessed even more information than they copied may never be known. The computers were connected to Wynn Resorts’ corporate network, and Elaine didn’t supervise her attorneys,” the company said.
Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez in January temporarily barred Quinn Emanuel from participating in the case for failing to disclose it had proprietary company information. The firm no longer represents Wynn in her suit.
