LAS VEGAS Deutsche Bank and affiliated development companies are the target of a lawsuit filed July 14 by 220 people who purchased residential condominiums at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the US$3.9 billion luxury development on the Strip that is set to open December 15.
The law firms of Girardi & Keese and Lurie & Park have filed a complaint in Clark County District Court against Deutsche Bank, Nevada Property 1 LLC and Nevada Voteco LLC, accusing them of abandoning the condominium component of the project and failing to disclose that fact to remaining buyers. The buyers say they have been faced with “a complete stonewall of information” from Cosmopolitan developers and are seeking an injunction to prevent Cosmopolitan from renting out condominium units to hotel guests.
Plaintiffs Seek Injunction
The plaintiffs also ask the court to compel Cosmopolitan to make required real estate disclosures and to prevent the developers from accessing condo buyers’ deposit funds that were placed into escrow.
“Many of the 220 unit purchasers of the condominiums claim to have been held hostage for five years while hundreds of thousands of dollars in deposits have been held by Deutsche Bank,” says lead counsel Shahram Shayesteh. “In addition, the defendants have sent letters to the plaintiffs demanding that they commit to close escrow on their units, in an attempt to bully plaintiffs into accepting partial refunds of their deposits, even though Deutsche Bank has failed to disclose even the most basic information about the nature of its condominium program.”
Shayestah says repeated attempts by buyers to seek disclosures and information on their condominiums have been ignored, even as The Cosmopolitan issues press releases and grants media tours. “It’s a terrible abuse of the legal system,” Shayesteh says. “This gigantic German bank has used its nearly unlimited resources to bully and coerce a group of mostly American citizens into signing away their rights for a fraction of the deposit monies this developer has held hostage for five years.”
Cosmopolitan spokeswoman Amy Rossetti calls the lawsuit “entirely without merit” and says the company will defend itself against the allegations. She has declined further comment.
The Cosmopolitan as currently designed is to supposed to feature 2,200 condominium-hotel units, 800 hotel guestrooms and a 75,000-sq.-ft. casino.