Red Hawk Casino ordered to pay $30 mil. to SoCal firm
By Dale Kasler, Sacramento Bee
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.
