J. Joan Hon writes:
Clark County Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez is considering further sanction against Sands China Ltd. for redacting “personal information” from about 2,600 documents the company produced in 2013 as part of an ongoing wrongful termination suit first filed in 2010 by Steven Jacobs, the former president of Sands Macau. Jacobs alleges that he was wrongfully fired for refusing to engage in unlawful acts, including promoting prostitution and spying on Chinese politicians in order to find potentially embarrassing information for use in obtaining favorable treatment for the casino.
Jacobs sought the production of about 100,000 emails and other documents from Las Vegas Sands Corp. and Sands China in order to show that Las Vegas controlled Sands China, and therefore the Nevada court has jurisdiction over Sands China. In 2012, Judge Gonzalez ruled that neither defendant could raise the Macau Personal Data Protection Act (the “Macau PDPA”), which has the closest approach to the European Union’s Data Protection Directive of 1995 than any other country in Asia, as an excuse to refuse disclosure. The ruling was made after it was learned that “significant amounts of data from Macau related to Jacobs was transported to the United States” and reviewed by in-house counsel for Las Vegas Sands and outside counsel. The defendants had tried to conceal the existence of the transferred data, and were subsequently ordered to make a $25,000 contribution to the Legal Aid Center for Southern Nevada, and to pay Jacobs’ legal fees for nine “needless” hearings involving issues related to the Macau PDPA.
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