Judge Dismisses Suit Alleging Price-Fixing at Las Vegas Casino Resort
A lawsuit claiming that four significant Las Vegas Strip casino resorts were involved in price-fixing has been thrown out, giving Caesars Entertainment, MGM Resorts, Wynn Resorts, and Treasure Island a triumph.
The judge responsible for the case, US District Chief Judge Miranda Du, dismissed the lawsuit which was an edited form of one she rejected in October 2023.
Based on Du's ruling, the amended lawsuit still did not demonstrate an alliance to conspire to determine the price points within those resort companies.
"Plaintiffs' claims that Defendants entered into a tacit agreement to fix prices have not moved from imaginable to plausible, despite the many additional allegations," the dismissal read. "This case remains a comparatively unique antitrust theory based on algorithmic pricing looking for factual allegations that can support it."
Misguided Antitrust
A class action lawsuits filed in the year 2023 in the US District Court by the Seattle-based law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro accused these four casino resort companies, which posses control over 26 of the 33 properties in or near the Las Vegas Strip, of coordinating to artificially hike the cost of their hotel rooms, breaking the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The lawsuit asserted that defendant companies coordinated through a data-sharing software called Rainmaker, produced by the Florida-based Cyndyn Group (also a defendant in the suit).
In a standard market where hotel operators set room rates individually, competing to fill as many rooms as possible, Rainmaker's operation based on sharing information and adjusting algorithms supposedly replaces standard competitive pricing, leading to raised room costs.
The software, Guestrev, manufactured by Cyndyn Group, analyzes guest and room supply information and artificially lowers the supply to make dynamic pricing suggestions biased towards the casino resorts. According to the dismissal, however, the resorts usually reject these recommendations.
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Source: www.casino.org
