Wynn Las Vegas seeks reduction in cocktail server’s jury award

Wynn Las Vegas has filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Nevada seeking a more than $310,000 reduction of a jury award to a cocktail server involving the company’s interference with the woman’s Family and Medical Leave Act rights.

The resort company on Tuesday also asked the court to sanction plaintiff Tiare Ramirez’s Henderson-based attorneys, Christian Gabroy and Kaine Messer, for failing to disclose how they calculated the lost benefits.

“Math is math, and the law is the law,” Wynn’s attorneys said in court documents filed in the case heard by U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Gordon. “After five days of trial and a slew of misrepresentations by plaintiff’s counsel, it is clear that the jury got both the math and the law wrong here. The jury miscalculated the damages that plaintiff is entitled to under the FMLA and grossly exceeded the bounds of what she is actually entitled to in calculating its award. This amounts to clear error and entering such an award without granting a remittitur would be a manifest injustice.”

Wynn attorneys asked that the jury award be reduced from $321,200 to $10,927.77.

A jury awarded Ramirez, a founding Wynn cocktail server hired in November 2008, the $321,200 for wrongfully abusing her FMLA rights. She was fired in November 2017, but the jury determined she should be compensated for lost wages and compensatory, emotional distress, liquidated and punitive damages. The jury denied a claim that Wynn also violated Ramirez’s Americans with Disabilities Act rights.

Ramirez filed her lawsuit against Wynn in 2019 and the trial concluded Oct. 25.

In a Wednesday interview, Gabroy said the calculation of damages was clearly stated at trial during jury instructions that “I recited over and over again.”

“Instead of paying the verdict, they decided to launch an attack against me,” he said. “It’s sad. They refused to pay the jury’s verdict and instead decided to file an unmeritorious motion for sanctions against me, against counsel personally.”

“Instead of accepting an 8-0 unanimous verdict and doing what’s right and what we’ve been asking for for seven years, Wynn has decided to engage in this retaliatory action.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.