A jury awarded a Southern California company $30.4 million over a severed contract to supply slot machines to Red Hawk Casino.
The casino's owner, the Single Springs Band of Miwok Indians, said it will appeal.
An El Dorado County Superior Court jury late Thursday awarded $30.4 million to Sharp Image Gaming of Chatsworth, a slot machine maker that supplied machines to the tribe's aborted effort to operate a temporary casino called Crystal Mountain in the mid 1990s. The tribe severed its ties with Sharp Image in the late 1990s and signed a development deal with a Minnesota company to build Red Hawk. The casino opened in 2008.
Sharp Image's president, Chris Anderson, claimed he had exclusive right to supply slots to Red Hawk. He sued for $250 million - the amount that he says would have been his share of the slot machine profits at the casino.
The tribe contends that its contract with Sharp Gaming was ruled invalid by the U.S. government, in part because the machines the company supplied to the Crystal Mountain casino violated existing regulations.
As previously reported, Red Hawk is performing far below expectations. Some months, it doesn't do well enough to generate the minimum $500,000 profit guaranteed to the tribe.
But Sharp Image's lawyer, Matthew Jacobs of Sacramento, said today he is confident his client can collect on the verdict. "Our claim is on the revenue, not on net profit. If we need to we're going to put a lien on their (the tribe's) bank account."
The jury awarded Sharp Image about $10 million for the money it spent in the late 1990s trying to get the Shingle Springs' tribe's gaming efforts off the ground, and another $20.4 million as the company's share of slot machine revenue.
"We will never stop defending ourselves against Sharp's effort to enrich itself through an illegal contract, which the tribe cancelled in 1999," said Nick Fonseca, tribal chairman, in a press release.
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