Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman Sheldon Adelson has sued a Wall Street Journal reporter for alleged libel over the way he was described in a December article concerning his company’s legal battle with its former Macau operations chief executive.

According to the newspaper, Adelson filed the lawsuit Feb. 22 in Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance and is seeking “damages, including aggravated, exemplary and special damages.”

The article ran under the headline “Fired Executive Rankles Casino Industry” in the U.S. edition of the newspaper and appeared in overseas editions as well as online.

The article compared Steven Jacobs as “a 6-foot-5-inch-tall Ivy League graduate who colleagues say rarely curses,” with Adelson, described as “a scrappy, foul-mouthed billionaire from working-class Dorchester, Mass.”

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