Wednesday, Aug. 13, 1997 | 11:26 a.m.
Casino mogul Steve Wynn rolled the dice with a Las Vegas jury and won big.
A District Court jury decided Tuesday that Wynn was libeled in a catalog ad promoting an unauthorized biography and awarded him $2.1 million for the damage to his reputation and even his hurt feelings.
Lady luck could smile on Wynn again today when the same jury considers whether to award punitive damages to the state's most high-profile casino executive.
After the verdict was announced in District Judge Sally Loehrer's courtroom, aging New York publisher Lyle Stuart walked quietly from the courtroom.
In Stuart's mind, Wynn hadn't gambled with the jury. He contended the dice were loaded.
"You can't expect much American justice in a Nevada courtroom," the 75-year-old Stuart said.
The jury awarded Wynn $500,000 for "emotional distress, humiliation and mental anguish," $1.5 million for damage to his reputation and $100,000 for injury to his business and professional standing.
By finding that Stuart committed "oppression, fraud or malice," the jury decided that punitive damages were justified.
Wynn didn't make it to the courthouse in time to savor his victory because of what his California attorney, Barry Langberg, said was a "business emergency."
Wynn is chairman of Mirage Resorts Inc., which owns The Mirage, Treasure Island and Golden Nugget hotel-casinos in Las Vegas and is building the massive Bellagio resort.
But Wynn's Las Vegas attorney, James Pisanelli, praised the jury verdict as "vindication ... that goes a long way in telling the country that it was damaging to his good name."
"The jury told us it was false and it was wrong," Pisanelli said of the ad that had been distributed to bookstores in hopes they would buy "Running Scared: The Dangerous Life and Treacherous Times of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn."
The book was authored by Review-Journal columnist John Smith, but he wasn't part of the court case in Las Vegas because it was Stuart who had written the catalog promotion. A libel lawsuit against Smith over the book itself has been filed in Kentucky.
Langberg said Wynn was elated with the decision. He expected that Wynn would attend today's punitive damages hearing.
"Mr. Wynn felt very grateful to the jury and is happy that this message was sent," Langberg said. "I say that hopefully the message will be sent a little more (Wednesday) morning."
While the jury awarded millions to Wynn, it determined that the casino king had been defamed in only one paragraph of the catalog ad, but not another that also had been at issue in the trial.
The defamatory section talked about the book's treatment of a Scotland Yard report that implied Wynn was a "front man" for the Genovese crime family.
The portion where no libel was found contended that a Wynn associate had ties to the late Chicago mob lieutenant John Roselli and Wynn's ownership of 3 percent of the Frontier Hotel in the 1960s "blew up" when it was learned that the Detroit mob controlled the hotel.
For attorney Dominic Gentile, who represents Stuart and Barricade Books, the verdict "surprised me and scares me."
"I think it says a lot about how 'mega-powerful' this man is," Gentile said.
Smith agreed, concluding that "this was about Steve Wynn's ego, not about hurt feelings."
"It's tough when you have an uneven playing field, when the governor and the mayor come at the snap of Wynn's fingers," Stuart lamented, referring to the praise for Wynn at the trial from Gov. Bob Miller and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones.
Gentile promised that the verdict "absolutely" would be appealed.
"I think that there are a number of solid issues," said the attorney who also represents Smith in his portion of the legal fight. "Virtually every ruling went against us in this case."
He was critical of Loehrer's ruling that republishing unreliable statements in the Scotland Yard report constituted automatic defamation even if Scotland Yard was credited with being the original author.
"To suggest that you can have a valid report and not publish it because the report says something bad about somebody pretty much would have eliminated the 'Pentagon Papers' case and all the problems that occurred in the White House in the last 25 years," Gentile said.
We'll just have to have Nevada catch up to the rest of the country, he vowed as the goal of the appeal process that will begin with a trip to the Nevada Supreme Court and then, if necessary, to the federal court system.
The focal point of today's hearing was to be the net worth of Stuart and Barricade Books and how much of that should be forfeited as punishment.
The jury will be told about how much money Barricade Books made from its gamble to publish the book that sold about 25,000 copies nationwide.
Smith is expected to testify about how much he pocketed for authoring the book despite what he said were Wynn's efforts to block it every step of the way.
Barricade Books specializes in nonfiction, how-to books and fringe publications such as "The Anarchist's Cookbook." Last year, Barricade Books published "The Turner Diaries," a race war novel considered a classic among white supremacists that prompted a call for a boycott by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Wynn is pursuing libel claims against Smith and Barricade Books in Kentucky. Gentile said he did not think Tuesday's verdict bode ill for that case.
In ruling for Wynn, the jury determined that Stuart maliciously printed the Scotland Yard report allegations while knowing they were false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
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