Investors in the shuttered Prive nightclub are suing prominent Las Vegas attorney and lobbyist Jay H. Brown, charging his conduct fouled up their deals to run clubs at Mandalay Bay.
Vegas South Partners LLC filed suit against Brown and his firm, Jay H. Brown Ltd., last week in Clark County District Court.
Brown had represented Prive, its sister club the Living Room and their investors in 2009 as the clubs at Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Strip tried to salvage their business after Clark County regulators temporarily closed them because of misconduct including lewd and topless behavior, prostitution, underage drinking and drug use.
The clubs, controlled by the Opium Group in Miami, eventually closed after filing for bankruptcy.
Last week’s lawsuit against Brown said that Vegas South Partners had also enlisted Brown’s help to assist with negotiation of amendments for two leases at Mandalay Bay, an MGM Resorts International casino resort also on the Las Vegas Strip.
Amendments were needed because Mandalay Bay was refusing to do business with two of the Prive investors, nightclub operators Frank Tucker and Greg Jarmolowich, who were implicated in the scandals at Prive.
For reasons that remain in dispute, Mandalay Bay terminated Vegas South’s lease for the Bambu Bar there and canceled a deal for Vegas South to develop a club called The Rose to occupy the former Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce space.
Vegas South’s lawsuits against Mandalay Bay over those lease terminations have been combined, with trial set to begin next week.
Vegas South, in the meantime, charged in its new lawsuit that after it engaged Brown to assist with the lease issues at Mandalay Bay in 2009, Brown had several discussions with Mandalay Bay executives and related to Vegas South executives including Mitch Rubinson that it didn’t need to pay rent until The Rose lease amendments were finalized.
In November 2009, lease negotiations broke down and Mandalay Bay terminated both leases, citing Vegas South’s failure to pay rent, the lawsuit said.
"When Vegas South attempted to defend itself against Mandalay’s claim that Vegas South failed and refused to pay rent by having Brown draft and sign an affidavit regarding what he’d been told by William Martin (a Mandalay Bay attorney), Brown refused to do so, claiming that he had never told Rubinson, Tucker or Jarmolowich not to pay rent. Brown further stated that Martin had never told him that Vegas South did not need to pay rent until The Rose lease amendment was executed," the lawsuit says.
"Brown has adopted the preposterous position that all of his conversations with Martin were nothing but 'friendly conversations' and that anything Martin may have said during these conversations should not have been relied upon by Vegas South – in essence, instead of paying Brown to protect its legal rights and salvage the substantial amount of money that Vegas South invested into The Rose and the Bambu Bar, that all Vegas South hired Brown to do was engage in idle chatter with Mandalay’s representatives," charged the lawsuit, filed by Las Vegas attorney Jason Landess.
Brown on Tuesday said he and his attorney, whom he declined to name, had reviewed the complaint.
"My attorney and I both feel the lawsuit has no merit," he said.