Settlement reached in Wynn suit

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 | 11:11 a.m.

Round 2 in the nearly 10-year battle between casino giant Steve Wynn and New York publisher Lyle Stuart over allegedly libelous advertisements for a book about the gaming mogul is off.

A settlement has been reached that ends the dispute, which went to trial, resulted in Wynn winning a $3.3 million judgment in 1997 and was overturned in the Nevada Supreme Court. Retrial was scheduled for this fall.

"It (the case) was dismissed in District Court on Friday," said Las Vegas attorney JoNell Thomas, an attorney for Stuart and his company, Barricade Books. "I cannot release any of the particulars."

She said the parties agreed that the terms of the settlement are to remain confidential. Thomas would not even confirm that money changed hands.

"I can't tell you anything about the terms other than that the settlement was accompanied by a letter of apology (from Stuart)," Wynn's Las Vegas attorney Jim Pisanelli said today.

Stuart had run ads in 1994 for the book "Running Scared: The Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn," which mentioned a confidential Scotland Yard document that inferred Wynn had a link to the Genovese crime family.

"I wish to assure you that, in publishing the catalog copy, I did not intend to state or imply that I believed you were a front man for the Genovose family," Stuart wrote in the letter.

The book was written by Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith, who was dropped as a defendant in Wynn's original lawsuit because he did not write the catalog promotion that was the basis for the suit.

In overturning the August 1997 verdict in January 2001, the Nevada Supreme Court found that District Judge Sally Loehrer erred with the jury instruction that they could find Barricade showed malice if "the publisher entertained doubt as to the veracity" of the Scotland Yard document.

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