Legal
Since 2008, Wynn has been embroiled in a legal battle with Girls Gone Wild impresario Joe Francis: Wynn accused Francis of owing him money, while Francis claimed that Wynn had threatened to kill him. On February 22, 2012, Clark County, Nevada judge Mark Denton ruled Francis damaged the reputation of Wynn as a result of defamatory statements and awarded Wynn $7.5 million in damages. On September 10, 2012, a jury again found in favor of Wynn, awarding him $20 million, and an additional $20 million in punitive damages the next day. Francis says he intends to appeal.
In January 2012, Wynn's former business partner and one-time majority shareholder Kazuo Okada filed suit to gain access to company documents related to Wynn's pledge to donate $135 million to the University of Macau Development Foundation, at the time that he was seeking Chinese government approval to build another resort in Macau. Subsequently, Wynn forcibly bought back Okada's $2.7 billion in shares at a steep discount. Okada has since filed several suits over these events. Both Okada and Wynn are under federal investigation for possibly bribing foreign officials to gain business advantage in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
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—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
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“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
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