Friday, November 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
'ADVANTAGE' GAMBLERS: High court questions lower ruling
District judge took state out of suit claiming two arrested, wrongfully accused of cheating
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARSON CITY -- Nevada Supreme Court justices raised questions Thursday about the validity of a lower court ruling that dropped the state Gaming Control Board from a suit filed by two Las Vegas gamblers who said they were arrested and wrongfully accused of cheating.
Chief Justice Deborah Agosti and Justice Nancy Becker repeatedly asked Control Board attorney Jennifer Carvalho to explain the grounds for the ruling by Clark County District Judge Lee Gates that took the state out of the lawsuit filed by Michael Russo and James Grosjean.
Russo and Grosjean consider themselves "advantage" gamblers who legally increase their odds of winning by taking advantage of a dealer's or casino's mistakes or by means such as card-counting. Grosjean is a doctoral candidate in economics who has authored a "how-to" manual on legal ways of beating the odds at gambling.
Their lawyer, Bob Nersesian, sued Park Place Entertainment Corp. and its Caesars Palace resort on the Las Vegas Strip after their 2000 arrests following a win of about $18,000 playing poker. The lawsuit against Caesars is still pending in Clark County District Court.
Russo was jailed for about 12 hours, and Grosjean was jailed for four days. They also wound up being named in the Griffin Book, a casino industry "black book" used by resorts to bar certain gamblers from playing at their tables. Griffin Investigations Inc. also has been sued.
In a separate incident, Grosjean was detained for half an hour, searched and cuffed at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas after walking through the resort but not gambling. Nersesian said Control Board agents had told casino security to watch for him.
When the Control Board moved to get its agents dismissed from the case, its legal argument was that the claims by Nersesian were conclusory allegations that lacked the necessary specificity to remain alive. Judge Gates agreed.
But Agosti and Becker said Nevada law requires a judge considering a dismissal motion to assume that the allegations are factual until proven otherwise in later proceedings. Specific details to support the claims aren't required initially, Becker added.
"What else could have been pleaded?" Agosti asked Carvalho in pressing for a justification for the lower court's finding following the motion hearing that the Control Board agents were immune from being sued.
Nersesian urged the high court to reinstate the Control Board in the case, saying the agents made up details, such as card-bending by the players, to justify the arrests.
"The entire card-bending idea was cooked up," said Nersesian. "It was a pretext for getting the casinos' money back."
