Monday, November 08, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Playing by the rules

'Advantage' gambler wins big jury award

A $400,000 judgment against the Strip casino Imperial Palace for detaining a gambler who had broken no laws could be good news for the future of gambling in Las Vegas -- but only if it marks the beginning of a trend.

Imagine what would happen to this town's biggest industry if word got out that visiting players who break no rules or laws can be handcuffed, threatened and locked up for hours against their will -- with impunity -- for nothing more than playing card games well enough to win.

The case of James Grosjean, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Chicago and author of "Beyond Counting" -- a "how-to" gambling manual on beating the odds in casinos -- started April 21, 2000, when the plaintiff was handcuffed and detained by security guards at Caesars Palace for winning a card game thanks to a "sloppy" dealer who allowed players to glimpse at his unturned cards.

Mr. Grosjean and a friend were detained at Caesars Palace for five hours and then taken to the Clark County Detention Center. The friend was released the next day, but Mr. Grosjean was held by police for 4 1/2 days.

The innocent player's problems escalated when he visited the Imperial Palace several weeks later.

"I wasn't even playing," Mr. Grosjean reported last year. "I noticed a guard watching me, so I left, but he followed me and he did get physical. He put his hand on my chest and he blocked me from leaving."

Mr. Grosjean was then handcuffed and led to a security cell by six guards who emptied his pockets, interrogated him and threatened "to smack his head against the wall."

The Imperial Palace incident "is absolute proof that (security officers) who affirmatively acknowledge they have no reason to detain someone, still feel at liberty to detain an individual, and the system and judges back each other up," explains Bob Nersesian, the local attorney who represented Mr. Grosjean.

Such "back-rooming" is a throwback to an unsavory past that most Las Vegas gamers have worked strenuously to put behind us.

The courts awarded Mr. Grosjean $99,000 in actual damages last month. On Thursday, District Judge Lee Gates unsealed the Clark County jury's Monday verdict, in which they awarded Mr. Grosjean $500,000 in punitive damages -- reduced to $300,000 by a statutory cap.

"The so-called 'advantage gambler' does nothing other than use his own brain and skills in ways that are totally legal," explains Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the local ACLU. "The decision reiterates the fact that people cannot be treated as criminals when they do not break the law."

The Grosjean case should not end here. State and local gaming regulators should stop wasting their time worrying whether the skirts are too short on casino billboards and instead turn their attention to a thorough review of how widespread such incidents are. Then they should lay down the law firmly enough to assure next year's tourists that they face no such risks for merely coming to Las Vegas and playing by the rules.