US court demands fees from Rod Stewart

A federal judge has ordered rock star Rod Stewart to pay a Las Vegas casino more than £1.7m for not returning advance money he was paid before he cancelled a concert in 2000.

US district judge Larry Hicks ordered Stewart’s lawyers to pay an additional £87,730 in contempt-of-court fines and legal costs for failing to give information to lawyers for casino giant Harrah’s Entertainment before trial last year.

Stewart’s solicitor, Louis “Skip” Miller in Los Angeles, declined comment tonight on the sanctions. Miller said Stewart intends to appeal the verdict.

Hicks’ judicial order on Friday, orders Stewart to pay £2m, including the £1.1m advance he was paid by the Rio hotel-casino and more than half a million pounds in interest, penalties and legal fees.

The British rocker and his lawyers are jointly responsible for paying the fines.

Harrah’s lawyer Kristina Pickering in Las Vegas called the civil breach-of-contract judgment “the right result” and ”a long time coming.”

The casino company intends to ask the court to order Stewart to reimburse it for additional solicitors’ fees and court costs, Pickering said.

The judgment resulted from a Sptember 7 federal jury finding that Stewart should not have kept an advance he received for a December 2000 New Year’s weekend show that he said he was unable to perform because of throat surgery he’d had several months earlier.

Jurors believed the British rocker should have returned the advance if he did not perform, the jury foreman said later.