Wednesday, July 13, 2005 | 10:56 a.m.
It sounded as though Mayor Oscar Goodman was serious Tuesday when he promised an "independent" investigation into how the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority secretly gave away its most popular marketing slogan.
Inside the packed LVCVA board room the mood was uncharacteristically solemn as the Las Vegas mayor, who chairs the 14-member board, spoke.
"There will be a full airing of all issues," Goodman said. "It will all be done publicly so that the public will have confidence in this authority and in its decision makers."
The board took the first step toward regaining that confidence Tuesday by approving the hiring of the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster to conduct the investigation into what happened to the "What happens here, stays here" slogan.
I first reported June 26 that the LVCVA had sold the valuable phrase for $1 to its longtime advertising firm, R&R Partners, in a move that has flabbergasted trademark experts, as well as advertising and tourism executives.
But just how serious Goodman and the board are about wanting to find out how this occurred remains to be seen.
How independent, after all, can that just-hired global law firm be if it's being paid by the LVCVA?
Neither Morrison & Foerster nor the LVCVA would say how much of a retainer the high-powered firm has received. But it's got to be a ton of money. This is a monster of a firm.
On its Web site Morrison & Foerster says it has "more than 1,000 lawyers in 19 offices around the world" -- including, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Beijing, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
The firm also lists a who's who of corporate clients, such as Visa USA, Bank of America, Hitachi, Capital One, Toshiba, Hershey Foods, Nikon and Kerr-McGee.
The two San Francisco-based Morrison & Foerster lawyers assigned to the LVCVA, Zane Gresham and Douglas Hendricks, have impeccable national and international credentials and decades worth of legal experience between them.
Hendricks heads the firm's Trademark Practices Group, and he's an expert on legal ethics and professional responsibility -- something lacking in the secret slogan dealings between the LVCVA and R&R Partners.
Morrison & Foerster, meanwhile, also has agreed to represent the LVCVA's interests in a federal lawsuit R&R Partners filed against a California woman who is selling a risque line of clothing under the logo, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."
That's going to be some tricky representation because the trademark infringement suit is all messed up. Until this week, R&R lawyers have been representing both its and the LVCVA's interests in the case. It's almost as if the agencies, one private and one public, have been joined at the hip.
From what we've uncovered so far, it appears as though the LVCVA signed away its lucrative slogan rights to R&R Nov. 9 as part of an effort to bolster R&R's shaky standing as a plaintiff in the suit.
The LVCVA had allowed R&R to file the complaint eight months earlier, even though the politically connected advertising agency had nothing in writing to show that it owned the "What happens here, stays here" mark.
The Nov. 9 agreement, which wasn't brought before the LVCVA board, was back-dated to Jan. 1, 2004, 11 weeks before R&R filed the complaint.
But now that lawyers for the defendant in the case, Dorothy Tovar, of Placerville, Calif., have questioned whether R&R had a legal right to go after their client, the LVCVA is trying to join in as a plaintiff.
This is the mess that the impressive Morrison & Foerster has been brought in to clean up.
If the LVCVA had hired these guys in the first place, like it should have, the odds are there would be nothing to clean up today.
And the rights to "What happens here, stays here" -- with all of its money-making potential -- would still be in the hands of the LVCVA.
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