The former casino mogul Steve Wynn’s defamation lawsuit against The Associated Press may be reopened by the Nevada Supreme Court.
The Defamation Lawsuit Dates Back to 2018
Earlier this week, the Nevada Supreme Court said it may reopen a defamation lawsuit from 2018. The lawsuit, filed by Steve Wynn, former CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd is against The Associated Press (AP) and one of their reporters. The case which now is more than two years old was initiated from an AP article that dates back to February 2018. The article described Wynn allegedly engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior towards two women. According to the AP, the article was based entirely on a police report.
However, this was rejected by Wynn’s lawyer Todd Bice. According to him, the article did not include some parts of the story by one of the women which were described as “fantastical”. With that being said, back in August 2018, Clark County District Court Judge Ronald Israel ruled that the article by AP was indeed based on the police report which was used. Earlier this week, appealing to the Nevada Supreme Court, Bice asked: “The question for the court is very simple. Was the defamation enhanced…by what the AP omitted in its reporting? The answer to that is absolutely yes.“
The Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Steve Wynn
There have been multiple sexual allegations towards Wynn. According to an article by The Wall Street Journal (WJS) female employees were allegedly pressured by Wynn into various sexual acts. One such allegation is by a manicurist at Wynn Las Vegas. The occurrence described in the article was referring to a case from 2005. The manicurist was called in Wynn’s office for a manicure, but once she was done, allegedly Wynn pressured her to undress. Then allegedly Wynn wanted the employee to lie on a massage table and have sex with him. The manicurist did not consent in the beginning due to the fact that she was married, but in the end she complied.
Another alleged incident described in the article by the WSJ refers to a therapist at Wynn Las Vegas’s spa. The article describes how Wynn was booking the same therapist for many appointments in a private massage room part of his office. Allegedly Wynn would expose himself on multiple occasions in front of the therapist. The article continues as allegedly Wynn started to touch the therapist on her legs while she was giving him a massage. At some point, Wynn asked the employee to massage his groin area. According to the article, allegedly this became a part of her frequent massage routine for several months.
The specific article by the AP that involved Wynn in alleged sexual misconduct relates to a lady under the name of Halina Kuta. Although her name was not used in the initial AP report, at a later point she agreed for the media to include her name. According to the AP article, Kuta was allegedly raped by Wynn back in 1970 in Chicago and this is what she told the police. But the story of Kuta is quite strange, as according to her, she even married Wynn and had kids from him. With that being said, she said that she could neither remember the birthdays of her kids, neither their names. Although not the full police report was introduced by the AP article, Judge Israel ruled that the news outlet managed to describe the story accurately. With that being said, according to Wynn, the article by AP was a defamation as it neglected some parts of the story which contained quite unusual details.