“If the commission didn’t grant either party a license, would you be injured?” asked Thompson, an Obama appointee.

“Those people weren’t known to the gaming commission and didn’t have to prove their suitability,” Storch said. “How are you different from the people who were going to provide the furniture?” she asked, “We were directly damaged,” insisted Suffolk’s lawyer, Steven Storch of Storch Byrne in New York.īut U.S. “You’ve made a foreseeability argument but that doesn’t get you very far.” “You’re not the directly injured party,” said U.S. “Why is that a radical departure?” asked Barron, unconvinced.īut Suffolk ran into trouble with the judges because it had partnered with Mohegan Sun, a Connecticut casino, and the application was submitted under Mohegan’s name. One of the defense lawyers, Aaron Katz of Ropes & Gray in Boston, argued that no other court had ever applied RICO to lying on a casino application and that doing so “would be a radical departure.” I just don’t see why that’s not a reasonable inference.”īarron, an Obama appointee, pointed to a case where a drug compounding center in Massachusetts caused a meningitis outbreak and officials were indicted under RICO because their way of doing business could cause future harm. “What’s the problem” with calling that a racketeering scheme, Barron wanted to know. Circuit Judge David Barron focused on the claim that Wynn and his company “had a way of doing business that’s sufficiently criminal that going forward there’s a high risk that they will continue to affiliate with organized crime figures and hide that.” The argument appeared to gain traction Monday as the federal appeals court considered whether Suffolk’s case was properly dismissed in November 2019. Suffolk sued under federal anti-racketeering law, claiming that Wynn and his company should have been disqualified on the basis of bribery, fraud and other serious misconduct in which they were engaged. The battle over the project - a $2.6 billion resort called Encore in the nearby suburb of Everett - has in one corner Steve Wynn, a billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate who ultimately got the license, and in the other Suffolk Downs, a Boston-area horse-racing track that opened in 1935 and had been viewed as the local favorite.

BOSTON (CN) - In a case with billions of dollars at stake and claims of international bribery, political payoffs, shadowy Mafia figures and rampant sexual misconduct, the First Circuit tried Monday to figure out whether Massachusetts gaming officials made a mistake in choosing who should build the Boston area’s only casino.

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