What do you think about the gambler who lost 500k at the casino and is now suing because he is saying he lost all that money due to the fact that they served him alcohol when he was already drunk?

So he got pissed twice, stop the world I wanna get off.

Interesting position
I would wonder why the casino would loan this guy so much.

So he’s claiming he’s too stupid to gamble and too stupid to drink? I don’t think that argument gets him far.

This is why some states require casinos to impose daily limits and the games will not operate unless you use a card to play. Pit Bosses will also keep track. The limit in Mississippi (I think) is $500 a day.
I think his argument is actually kind of valid. The security tapes may show he was not able to control himself. You legally cannot agree to sex as a female if you are wasted. The bars can be held liable for safety outside of the establishment if they over serve… This should be interesting.
I was cut off in Reno one time because my companion was too drunk to play. I was the designated driver, so I was sober, but when she was cut off, so was I.

There purportedly are plenty of eye witnesses and surveillance tape (no indication I can find what this will prove either way). What makes me wonder the most is this clown took out a loan from the casino and proceeded to lose it all. I don’t see how he could have gotten all that money without some scrutiny from the casino bank. Secondly it had to take a long time to lose that much money and perhaps he was not that drunk when he borrowed the money and started to gamble.

There are very strict rules in place in Vegas that prohibit casinos from allowing customers to gamble who are visibly intoxicated. This guys stands a good chance of winning his argument and setting a precedent that to make sure you have a few drinks in you when you are on a losing streak.

@GloPro Unless the eye witnesses and surveillance tape show this guy was sober enough to know what he was doing…this most likely will be settled out of court and behind closed doors with him agreeing to keep quiet about the whole thing.

The last thing casino’s want is for gamblers to think they can get away with stunts like this.

Interesting argument.

I’ve always felt it was kind of unfair to actually hold a bar liable for someone getting in their car and driving home drunk. I wonder how often that law is used? From what I understand, even if I have a party at my house I can be in trouble if a friend drives home drunk and has a car accident. You don’t have to be drunk to blow a .08. At the same time, someone who is visibly drunk, they really should not be served more alcohol. They have no judgement.

I think the casino should settle with the guy and let him out of the debt and ban him from the casino.

The guy is an addict in my opinion, plain and simple.

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24469451/man-sues-casino-over-losing-500k-during-super-bowl-weekend-while-drunk

I forgot to post the link in my question – here it is.

@Cruiser When you used to drink did you blackout? I know I have a few times. According to friends they knew I was drunk and couldn’t tell I was blacked out. I’ve kept going with no memories for hours back in the day. I broke my tailbone once, a couple of toes on a separate occasion, all with no memory and waking the next morning in tremendous pain. Lucky for me I’m past those years, but I was definitely not in control while blacked out.

I have known many alcoholics (myself included) who could pass for relatively sober even though in a blackout. Blackout is not necessarily correlative to a certain blood alcohol content. So he would have to show why they would know he was too drunk to be given any credit.

Of course he would have been belligerent if they had cut off his credit or his liquor.

@GloPro I only had one black out episode and that was when I was 18. The last few years of my drinking I could drink 750 ml of vodka and not even slur a word and I never passed out either. That is why I have a hard time with this guys story. He seems to me like a career drinker and more than likely can drink a lot and be cognizant of his actions.

I find it interesting that you say you were not in control while you were blacked out yet your friends had no clue you were blacked out which tells me your words and actions showed otherwise. That is what is so insidious about alcohol…after just a couple drinks, an alcoholic loses all ability to say no to more drinks.

My first reaction: He’s a gambler. He’s gambling his potential loss (loss of the suit and upholding of the debt) against his potential gain (could be anything from vacating the debt up to some type of damages paid to him).

My second reaction: Maybe the establishment does have some “dram shop” liability. The majority of states allow for recovery when the establishment representative knew (or should have known) the customer was intoxicated.

One thing’s for sure: he’s now cut off in every casino in the United States, and possibly most overseas. Casinos don’t like it when you try to get out of your obligation.

Very stupid argument, but…

…by the logic of very stupid politicians, maybe he should get his money back. There are indeed laws against serving “visibly drunk” patrons. If someone gets drunk at a bar and drives home, the bar is at least partly culpable. Why shouldn’t that logic apply to casinos?

For me this is yet another case of someone not being able to take responsibility for their own actions. I do agree that if a bar, casino, etc have reason to believe that someone has had too much to drink and could be a danger to themselves or others then they should advise that enough is enough and the same could be said for gambling in that, once they have spent a certain amount and it is clear that the person has a problem then the casino should advise that they have lost enough and to call it a day. However, I still don’t think that the casino or bar should be held accountable for a grown persons decisions.

@Cruiser When I blacked out I was a totally different person, which is what I mean by not in control. On one occasion I was at a comedy show with friends. They knew I was wasted, but how do you know someone isn’t forming memories? I remember sitting down. I woke up about 6 hours later on my neighbor’s couch. According to my friends we were thrown out because I was yelling “You’re not funny!!!” And other extremely rude things to the opening act. I don’t remember the meal that followed or the cab ride home. My neighbor was out-of-town. The house sitter had never met me and she told me later that I pushed past her and dove head first onto the couch, demanding the dog sleep with me. I am so glad I don’t remember that night. What a rude inconsiderate asshole. So although I was definitely moving about, my whole personality was way off and I was not in control of my actions. I consider myself lucky to have made it almost home safely.
Even if this guy is a career alcoholic, if he was blacked out (which may be hard to prove), then the casino should have paid for a room or a cab for him to get back to his hotel and 86’ed him from the casino floor. Tough, tough case, in my opinion. What if he was robbed, beaten up or raped while the casino served him and he wasn’t able to coherently defend himself? Would that make it a different case?

On a different note, I have been 86’ed from the casino for encouraging a ‘whale’ to walk away from a table, too.

He will lose the lawsuit. This is all bluster.

If alcoholics are continually allowed to not bear the responsibility of their actions then they really have no incentive to get treatment.

Every alcoholic in recovery has reached a point where they realize that they simply cannot go on like this. That’s when they’re able to break through the denial long enough to seek help.

Yes, the casino continued to serve him but nobody tied him up and forced it down his throat. He needs to feel the weight of taking responsibility for his actions.

If the court rewards him for this, they have, in essence, contributed to the continuing denial and alcoholism. of every gambling alcoholic in the future.

They will, in effect, be enablers. The only way that alcoholics can continue their self destruction is by the cooperation of the enablers in their lives. The enablers are the ones who feel sorry for them and mistakenly bail them out of jail, call up their workplace with excuses, provide them money and other financial support to cushion them from the consequences of their drinking.

Only if they must face the consequences of their drinking will they realize that the booze is the problem.

If the court truly want to be of genuine help here, they would court-commit him to a long term rehab facility and only make some provision to absolve the debt after a 10 yr. track record of sobriety.

@Buttonstc Normally I would say be fair here and not jump to the conclusion that this man is an alcoholic or even is aware he is one. This is not even a case of it takes one to know one…but anyone who drank at the airport, on the way to the hotel, then more drinks at dinner and then more drinks while gambling to the point of a blackout is an alcoholic and probably been one for quite a while. And even if this casino stopped serving him he would have found somewhere that would serve him. There is not one day or time that I could ever lay blame on anyone else but myself for my actions when I was drinking. Each drink I took was because all I knew is I wanted more alcohol and did a lot of stupid and desperate things to get it. Alki’s can be relentless and very convincing in an effort to get more liquor in them and in a way feel bad for this casino for that reason alone. This is a lose/lose situation.

Well, let me put it this way. The casino will doubtless learn from this experience and stop allowing people to ring up 500K debts. And possibly institute policies for their servers for some type of drink maximums (maybe).

But will he learn any lesson ?

You said that he may not even be aware that he is an alcoholic. If he’s allowed to skate on this, how much longer will it take? And will he live long enough to learn?

We are all familiar with the saying that an alcoholic must reach bottom before they’re ready to consider treatment.

The biggest problem with that is that for many the bottom is death. Current thinking (and the primary reasoning behind an organized intervention) is RAISING THE BOTTOM because the farther down his bottom is, the greater the chance that death will be the intervention.

But its not necessary to wait that long.

If he is held responsible for his actions and he has an ounce of common sense, he will no longer drink while gambling. But if he’s an alcoholic that won’t be possible. So that would remove any doubt about where his priorities lie.

Raising that bottom increases his chances of survival and sobriety. Every time he cannot escape consequences, raises that bottom up even closer.

Every time he evades consequences it pushes that bottom further away.

And, if he is not, in fact, an alcoholic, then he’s in his right mind and this incident will be the impetus for the last drink he ever takes. But he must feel the consequences for that to kick in.

And if he is not an alcoholic, a little vacation in rehab is still a lot better than jail.

It doesn’t have to be a lose lose scenario but it likely will be the way the courts are nowadays.

Just for curiosity, looking back, would you not rather have gotten sober sooner and not had as many wasted years (as well as damage to body and brain) ?

@Buttonstc Of course. My problem is I was a high functioning alcoholic and successful which why I denied I had a problem for so long. I felt I deserved a drink after a hard day at the office and my wife didn’t get in the way of my drinking because she just thought I was stressed.

That’s unfortunate.

My stepfather was the same. My mother was the one who was the obvious alcoholic.

It wasn’t until years and years later that it finally dawned on my younger sister that he was an alcoholic as well.

I asked her what made the light bulb go off. She said “every single morning he would go to his (locked) file cabinet and start the day off with a few shots of whiskey. One day I realized that that’s not something normal people do ”

And obviously, those weren’t the only drinks he had in a typical day but she was in school the rest of the time and he never ate dinner without booze either.

What was it that finally woke you up to the fact that you had a problem?

Hm, I hope that guy has money left, because you’ll need a damn good lawyer to take a casino to court. :/

Strictly from the article link @filmfann provided:
“Nevada law bars casinos from allowing obviously drunk patrons to gamble and from serving them comped drinks.”
“The suit alleges that the Grand comped him dozens of drinks while he gambled…”

It’s all on security camera, should be cut and dried.

That said, he is either wealthy enough that he had set up a $500,000 line of credit that he was willing to lose, or he was sober enough to continue to extend his credit. He’s hardly the typical customer, and if he’s prearranged that kind of credit, he should lose it.

The man is obviously a millionaire. If the casino refused him use of a credit line, he could have sued for that, too.

If they refused him credit, what would be his grounds for a suit?

I didn’t know that a bank or any other institution, could be found at fault for refusing credit to someone (unless it was for racial reasons and even that would require proof).

@Buttonstc I was getting increasingly angry and at stupid little things too. I also destroyed a very important friendship and that one event made it clear I had a drinking problem I needed to shed.

I signed my student loans under duress and I was off my medication… can I get a refund?

@talljasperman I was in a blackout state when I filed my taxes…can I get any of that back?

@Cruiser

Good for you. And I’m sure you’re a lot happier nowadays.

I can’t understand why Americans who pride themselves on their independence and self reliance are so reluctant to accept responsibility for their own actions. He gambled and lost, it was his choice man up and don’t go blaming what happened on others.

@filmfann I heard a story on NPR a couple months back about this sort of thing actually. Evidently casinos are quite fond of that predatory loaning, keep giving them shit, keep loaning money so they feel like they need to keep coming back, to get even, maybe, just maybe , this time strike it big.Feed the addiction.

@uberbatman I can only think for every gambler that raises a ruckus about being over served and losing their shirt there is over 10,000 who just go home with their tail between their legs. All part of the cost of doing the business of gaming.

I would close all casinos… they are a blight on family’s.

One can force a horse to wather but one cannot force it to drink.
Uttimatley thinking specimens do in fact do have a choice.
Why should we be responsible for another actions unless it is boserved that he was “out of it”?
In that case he should have been shown th door and refused service , as now he becomes a concern and responsibility ,to the community.