Yes, there have been several such instances, not just in Las Vegas, but nationwide. For example, in 2006 a New Jersey man sued the Tropicana in Atlantic City, where he'd worked, claiming the owner, Aztar, "caused and permitted an abnormally dangerous activity at the Tropicana and such activity caused [him] to suffer lung cancer." The suit also claimed that the company had, "done nothing whatsoever to warn, guard against or alleviate the dangers of secondhand smoke to those individuals ... who work at the Tropicana."
In another instance, the mother of a casino dealer who died of cancer sued Caesars Entertainment, the owner of Harrah’s New Orleans, accusing the company of failing to protect her son and other employees from dangerous levels of secondhand smoke and that Maceo Bevrotte Jr.’s cancer was "directly linked" to his prolonged exposure to secondhand smoke at the casino. Bevrotte, a dealer at the property for 15 years, died in 2010 of leukemia.
In 2009, Wynn Las Vegas was at the center of a class-action lawsuit, representing all past and current workers at the resort, claiming that the property had been less proactive than its competitors in dealing with the dangers of secondhand smoke, including failing to designate certain sections of the casino as smoke-free, not permitting dealers to use fans on their gaming tables, and failing to help those employees harmed by smoke while on the job.
In the first of these cases, the plaintiff, Vince Rennich, who'd worked at the Tropicana for 25 years before being laid off during staffing cuts, was awarded a $4.5 million settlement against his former employer, a decision on which Aztar declined to comment at the time.
In the case of the suit against Harrah's New Orleans, however, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, rejecting the claim on the part of the deceased plaintiff's mother that leukemia was an occupational disease.
As to the similar case against Wynn Las Vegas, this survived an early dismissal motion from the casino company but four years later is still mired in legal-wrangling, with the federal-court decision still pending.
It's not only in the U.S. that such cases have been brought to court; earlier this year, 28 of Macau's 46 casinos failed newly introduced government air-quality tests, following the Jan. 1 mandatory introduction of defined smoking areas. 16 of the 28 went on to fail again when re-tested, although we're not sure what the legal consequences have been to date.
In terms of casino air quality in general, things have definitely improved over recent decades, as a combination of better air-filtration systems and designated non-smoking areas have been rolled out (see "QoD" 11/24/13), but few older resorts have gone to the lengths of a hi-tech property like Aria, which is vented from the ground up (i.e., the stale air is constantly sucked upward, as opposed to clean air being blown down) and dealers are protected behind an "invisible wall" of air intended to protect them from secondhand smoke. It will be interesting to see the eventual outcome of the Wynn case.
