Las Vegas Sands Corp. is ratcheting up the legal pressure on its fired Macau CEO, hitting him with a new lawsuit alleging misappropriation of trade secrets.
The suit was filed Friday in Clark County District Court against Steven Jacobs. A few days earlier, Las Vegas Sands had accused Jacobs of stealing company information.
The initial information theft allegation was made in an amended Las Vegas Sands counterclaim in a lawsuit filed by Jacobs charging he was wrongfully fired in July 2010 and then denied valuable stock options.
Friday’s lawsuit marks the first time Las Vegas Sands has directly sued Jacobs, at least in Nevada.
The suit also names as a defendant a Jacobs company, Vagus Group Inc., which did consulting work beginning in March 2009 for Las Vegas Sands and subsidiary Sands China Ltd. prior to Jacobs joining the company as CEO of Sands China in Macau.
The new lawsuit alleges documents "stolen and/or wrongfully retained by Jacobs described sensitive compilations, methods, techniques, systems and/or procedures relating to gaming operations, personnel and labor and include proprietary, confidential and material non-public financial information."
This material, some containing personal data subject to Macau’s Personal Data Protection Act, was "wrongfully removed" regularly by Jacobs throughout his relationship with the company, the lawsuit charges.
"Las Vegas Sands is informed and believes that on the day he was terminated, Jacobs surreptitiously transferred several gigabytes of electronic documents and files to a removable flash drive and removed the flash drive from the premises," the lawsuit charges.
Vagus and Jacobs are accused in the suit of civil theft/conversion and misappropriation of trade secrets.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs and an injunction compelling Vagus and Jacobs to "immediately return all stolen and/or wrongfully retained property of Las Vegas Sands Corp."
Jacobs and his attorneys have not yet answered the new lawsuit, but in the past have denied Jacobs stole anything from the company.