With a lawsuit pending against Mohegan Sun by Northeast Realty, a one-time partner in the failed Palmer casino project, the Connecticut-based gaming company has fired back with a lawsuit of its own.
Leon Dragone
In its counter-suit which became public this week, Mohegan Sun makes a series of claims against the company's manager Leon Dragone, claiming that the Longmeadow resident not only violated the terms of contracts but took actions which ultimately helped anti-casino proponents derail the project entirely.
Within the pages of the counter-lawsuit filed in Hampden Superior Court, Mohegan asserts that Dragone's alleged failures included not working to secure support from Springfield officials well before city government began eying the promised investment of MGM Resorts International and Penn National Gaming; organizing his own pro-Palmer casino movement that confused the message of Mohegan's official get-out-the-vote drive and actively used ownership of a New Bedford property as a bargaining chip to court other casino companies in violation of the exclusivity agreement signed between Northeast Realty and the Connecticut casino company.
Northeast Realty dismissed the countersuit as a personal attack against Dragone, but the lawsuit claims Dragone didn't leverage his Springfield contacts to boost support for the Palmer casino project.
This artist rendering shows Mohegan Sun's proposed Palmer casino, which the voters in that town rejected by a margin of 94 votes in November 2013.
"As the closest city to Palmer, Springfield was the most important regional economy, and it was expected to provide crucial early support for the Palmer Project and ultimately, serve as a key source of labor for a gaming facility in Palmer," page 14 of the lawsuit reads. "Ignoring Mohegan’s instructions, however, Dragone neglected his acquaintances in Springfield and failed to engage Springfield in the Palmer Project. As a result, some early supporters from Springfield withdrew from the Palmer Project, and in fact entered into other gaming agreements, some in Springfield."
While negotiations over the host community agreement with the town of Palmer were ongoing, Mohegan hired Michael Vito & Associates of Northampton to direct its field operations in preparation for the vote on the ballot question. Shortly afterwards, Dragone was said to have started working against Vito's efforts, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit claims that as Vito was set to launch the "Yes for Palmer" campaign committee, Dragone caught wind and launched the "Vote Yes for Palmer" group.
"In addition to being a breach of his obligations under the GMR Agreement, Dragone's competing campaign group also defied common sense: Palmer had approximately 7600 registered voters, about 6000 of whom were considered active voters," the lawsuit claims. "A town of Palmer's size did not require and could not support two campaign committees in favor of approving gaming in Palmer, especially two whose names were so confusingly similar."
In regards to the Northeast Realty-owned property in New Bedford, Mohegan alleges that as part of the exclusivity agreement the two sides signed, Dragone was to divest all ownership interests. The lawsuit contends that instead of doing so, he continues to court a potential casino client for the location just in case licensure for a casino moves forward in the Southeastern part of the state.
In its lawsuit filed against Mohegan Sun back in February, Northeast Realty alleges that it was the casino company that violated the terms of the exclusivity agreement by engaging in talks with Suffolk Downs before the Palmer voters turned down the proposal there. In response to the countersuit, Northeast Realty contends that Mohegan Sun is trying to smear Dragone's reputation and that as its own lawsuit moves forward, the truth will come out.
"Blaming Northeast for Mohegan's failure in Palmer further erodes their credibility in Massachusetts. Blaming others for their failures is a typical Mohegan Sun response," Northeast Realty said in a statement. "They blamed the two-year delay in sharing details of the Palmer project with the public on their debt restructuring and then blamed the host community process in stalling the Palmer agreement for more than 12 months, negotiations that took Mohegan only about 12 days to complete in Revere for their Suffolk Downs partnership."