Venetian suit against LVCVA advances

Gary Thompson

Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 10:16 a.m.

District Judge James Mahan said Wednesday he's determined to avoid delays in the scheduled Oct. 5 start of a trial over the Venetian's bid to block expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Mahan said the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority has "raised the specter" of irrelevant discovery requests by Venetian lawyers and urged that the two sides cooperate in streamlining the procedure.

Discovery is a legal process in which opposing sides turn over requested documents, witness statements and other evidence to each other to prepare for trial.

The judge rules on disputed requests and determines whether the evidence is admissible in the trial.

The Venetian sued last month to overturn the LVCVA's vote approving a $150 million expansion of the Convention Center, contending the board violated state laws in approving issuance of tax-free revenue bonds without a public vote.

Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson also contends the Convention Center competes unfairly with his Sands Expo Center, which Venetian officials said would lose most of its trade show business if the 1.3 million-square-foot expansion is built. Venetian officials have acknowledged it costs organizers three times as much to stage trade shows at the Sands as at the Convention Center.

LVCVA officials argue that the suit is designed to delay completion of the expansion and could cost Las Vegas business if convention organizers move elsewhere, as they have threatened.

Saying he "was serious" about starting the trial on Oct. 5 to avoid any unnecessary delays, Mahan said he will focus on the crux of the dispute between the Venetian and the LVCVA. The two key issues are whether the board can issue such bonds by itself, without a public vote, and whether the board violated the state's open-meeting law.

Third parties such as the Culinary Union, which has filed briefs supporting the LVCVA action, will play a secondary role, the judge said.

"The defining mark of litigation should be what the law says," Steve Morris of the Schreck Morris law firm argued on behalf of the LVCVA.

"And the law says that when a judge considers the appropriateness or inappropriateness of action by a public body, then the judge must rely on the public record."

Morris said that by Friday, the LVCVA will deliver to Venetian lawyers minutes and transcripts of all public meetings in the past two years during which board members discussed the planned expansion.

"The law says that's what is subject to judicial review," Morris said. "If the record before the deliberative body doesn't support its decision ... the court can only overturn it if the action was arbitrary and capricious, not if the court simply disagrees" with the decision.

Venetian lawyers, however, want more than records limited just to the LVCVA's public deliberations; they want LVCVA staff reports and any other information that may have prompted any board members to approve the expansion, even if the data wasn't presented in the public meetings.

They also want to take testimony from board and staff members to determine if decisions were made before the public sessions in violation of open-meeting laws.

"The plaintiffs are entitled to discovery on whether there was an open-meeting law violation," Morris said. But he argued that the Venetian hadn't presented any concrete evidence that a violation occurred, other than the usage of the word "we" by former Las Vegas Mayor and LVCVA board member Jan Jones during a board meeting.

"If we're going to go into that," Morris said, "I urge that the first deposition be from Jan Jones" to determine if she was referring to a "secret" meeting or adopting a more innocent usage of the word.

Morris urged the judge to manage the scope of discovery, or "we won't be ready for trial by Oct. 5, 2000."

Venetian attorney Stephen Peek argued that the expanded discovery is necessary because the record of LVCVA's public deliberations is meaningless if the vote was "based on false assumptions."

"I'm entitled to the full record of proceedings," Peek said. He alleged the LVCVA is "trying to hide information," citing a statement by LVCVA President Manny Cortez at one hearing that the staff had "prepared a five-year strategic plan."

"We've never seen that strategic plan," Peek argued. "We want to look at all the information that was available to the staff. If information wasn't presented to the board, that's an irregularity.

"What are they afraid of?" he asked.

"We're not afraid of anything that's in the record and we're giving them that," Morris said. "We're here to review an agency action that's based on a discrete set of records."

The Venetian isn't entitled to review "hotel bills, telephone records and other information the Convention Authority didn't have in its hands when it voted on the expansion," he said.

Mahan deferred a decision on the scope of discovery until Aug. 27, pending a review of the documents each side gives the other before then. He also ordered them to prepare lists of potential witnesses, but won't rule on which will be allowed until reviewing what the lawyers expect them to say.