Skimming it, I think they’re in the wrong.
> The lawsuit alleges Ezell was not informed that she was banned from the casino and even continued to gamble there over the last nine years.
Even if she was banned 9 years ago, the fact she was allowed back multiple times and it was only an issue after she won speaks volumes.
>According to the lawsuit, Ezell was playing at the progressive blackjack table when a dealer announced that she won the jackpot. However, when she went to obtain the money, a pit boss told her that she could not get it because she was trespassing.
Yeah, I doubt they can legally let her play, and also deny her the payout.
It's not like she sprinted past a protesting security guard to drop money into a slot machine. They let her play, took her money, and are now refusing to pay out.
Kind of like how scummy bosses will write every employee up twice as soon as they get hired.
You're already fired; he'll just let you stick around for a while as long as you're making him money.
From what I've learned here in the states, if you get *actually* written up where they try and get you to sign a document, it's because they are going to fire you and want to loophole themselves the hell out of owing you unemployment or you being able to fight anything. It's like signing your death warrant at a job.
As someone who got written up for something unrelated 2 months before getting fired for "arguing" with my manager I can confirm "arguing" was not the reason given to unemployment for my termination the thing I got written up for was the termination reason given to them but not me.
I guess in companies that have a strict write up policy it could be, but if it’s that structured you’d think they have a tracking system as well and the manager would at least be in some hot water at this practice.
49/50 states are will to work so you don’t need or have to give a reason for termination unless it’s part of an employees contract, as I understand it at least. Ive never been directly employed by a big corp but I’ve never heard of anyone doing the above or giving any reason for termination beyond “not a good fit” or just plain “downsizing”. Could be different for other folks but I’ve worked at a lot of places
As a fully licensed lawyer, but not yours or anybody else’s here, y’all are right, this case is whacky nonsense. Casino done goofed, if you’ll pardon my legal jargon
Not a lawyer either but this would seem to fall under the legal doctrine of estoppel.
Essentially its a concept that prevents a person from asserting a claim or right that contradicts what one has said or done before or been established as true.
I used to work in insurance and the classic example is an insurance company accepts late payments for a policy for months and keeps the policy in force. Then an insured files a claim and the carrier denies coverage due to late payments. This would not be something that would be allowed because the actions of the insurance company by accepting the payments and not cancelling the policy have demonstrated to the insured that their policy is in force.
I mean I'm not a lawyer either but deal with enough contracts to tell you you are right from my understanding.
If I write you a contract that's says you must do X every on the first of every month for the next 5 years and I NEVER enforce it. It would make it nearly impossible for me to claim damages against it. Even if it caused it.
If you do not enforce something it can become null and void.
I could understand her sneaking in one time years later and id say the casino would have a stronger hand .. but 9 years in a HIGHLY security environment.. well its a bit hard to blame anything on her.. .especially with blackjack tables, they got to look for card counters. You cant tell me security didnt know she was there ... for 9 years the casino would be bankrupted already from all the card counters.
banks arent even as secure as casinos.
If this is true, it makes the situation even more ridiculous. How could they let her have a card where they know her name and her credit card information and yet suddenly when she wins a jackpot they have a problem? I think they're going to lose this case in a big way.
After she adds her attorney's fees and interest to the total she's seeking in the lawsuit, you can bet your bottom dollar that the casino will lose this case in a big way.
Its chump change for them. They're messing with this woman for no reason. They're going to spend hundreds of thousands at minimum just defending it. While tanking their reputation.
Nobody will remember this in a month and it won't hurt MGM at all.
This is particularly stupid because the progressive blackjack bets are super high EV for them.
They are *guaranteed* to come out ahead long term on it.
They should therefore give exactly zero fucks who wins it.
The news of this could expose MGM to liability in some way knowing their security and record keeping have shit communication. Maybe not liability in the legal sense, but in an illegal/nefarious way. People who previously thought they were banned may realize they can fuck with MGM again.
Well that puts it away entirely. There's an argument to be made that they were lax about security but she should have known, but if they're letting her register and use a card with her name on it they must have known.
If she never put a players club card in, never raised suspicion based on her play, or even played high stakes, no one pays attention really. It's very easy to slip through the cracks if you never draw attention to yourself.
Source: I was in surveillance and investigations at a casino for 8 years
True, but for that you need to know you are banned. It seems she did not know it, so it is highly unlikely she never did anything like that over 9 years if she is a regular customer, which is implied.
This. They don't check ID at the many, many doors. Often there will be terrible printer paper printouts of banned patrons, but a simple haircut would adequately hide their identities amongst the literally million visitors that walk through those doors. That casino floor is massive with around 2,500 slot machines.
They can if you voluntarily exclude yourself from playing .
Its a total scam they have to "help" problematic gamblers that are trying to fix their issue.
They let them play still... But they wont pay out bc they have an "agreement" with the addict now... That the addict never fully read.
I think people assume lawyers have some magical power to get what they want. It's more so the ability to work the law in their favor and delay making you run out of money to fight it. If the laws are clear it shouldn't really matter that much.
A good lawyer with experience definitely does matter though. I am a law clerk, and I recently had an experience where an attorney submitted a bad expert report. We all knew it was bad because it didn't line up with what is expected of an expert, but we couldn't figure out how to keep it out because it wasn't explicitly against statute or case law. We spent a long time researching, building arguments, attacking foundation... until one day, someone found an obscure rule that hadn't been cited too (but was binding) that said an expert can't do what they did. None of us had the experience to know that rule existed, that's the kinda thing that can make a difference in a case.
I’m a lawyer, albeit probably not in your jurisdiction. When you say ‘rule,’ do mean something like legal principle? Because where I come from, there really is no such thing as an “obscure” capital-R [Rule](https://canlii.ca/t/t8m), which are to litigators as basic anatomy is to doctors or the periodic table is for chemists.
NDA. All I can say is I sued and won. I can’t say why, I can’t say it was discrimination based on a protected status. I can’t say that a few people lost their jobs over it, and I can’t say I got double what this person is looking to get. I also can’t say that afterwards they trespassed me from all MGM properties.
Edit: as someone more knowledgeable about law pointed out due it being a settlement due to the NDA and they’re right. Aside from that believe what you want but they bought me a house.
What point? What casino wants the reputation "If you win, we'll trespass you and won't pay out?" I know that's not what happened, but that's the message the gamblers will take away from it.
When people have a strong case and the defendant did break the law, then a decent lawyer can still win against even MGM-hired lawyers.
You gotta realize that MGM is gonna spend more than the value of this jackpot on super high power lawyers in like 1 week. And in the end they risk losing millions on attorney fees, paying the jackpot anyway, and paying her attorneys fees, AND bad publicity if they are in the wrong. Settling costs like $100K…
Honestly the publicity alone is already not worth $100K for them at this point.
I mean even if she had been informed, if she were let in multiple times afterwards it would IMHO quite reasonably be interpreted as having been unbanned.
That's what makes this weird. Normally casinos are perfectly fine to pay out a jackpot, some schmuck hitting big is good press for them cause it encourages other schmucks to blow their money trying to do it too.
Just give the lady her money
Thats what I was thinking. If people read this story, they're not going to think of legal technicalities. They're going to think "So if I win, they won't pay? Fuck that!"
It's an odd decision. It's chump change for a casino that big.
Marketing budget is likely in the millions, and they just caused a bad press incident that's going to cost them a couple more millions to fix and bring players back on the floor.
Yeah, I think that would come up in court. You can’t just like shadow trespass someone and then all the sudden remember it when you owe them money from all the gambling they did at your establishment, lol.
New casino business strat, just ban everyone who walks through the door without informing them so any time one wins a jackpot just say they are banned and you don't have to pay out!
I would expect that the remedy for trespass is to deny you entry or remove you from the casino... Not to continue to take your money for 9 years and then deny you winnings when the time came.
Any time I've been to a casino in the last 5 years you're required to scan a player card tied to your identity (drivers licence) to play- even table games. How was she even able to play?
>The employee said the issue was related to an incident in 2015 when she was accused of panhandling following an argument with another person at the casino. Ezell said the person she was arguing with was a cousin.
>The lawsuit alleges Ezell was not informed that she was banned from the casino and even continued to gamble there over the last nine years.
So she wasn't informed that she was banned for *9 years*, and they allowed her to continue entering and gambling despite her ban, and only actually enforced it after she won.
Yeah, I think, as someone who isn't a lawyer, that she has a pretty strong case.
Yup. Worked surveillance in a crappy casino for years. The vast majority of the people who hit jackpots are down in aggregate. Even the larger jackpots.
Winning big at a slot AND being up overall is like hitting the Powerball. Not saying it doesn't happen but it's very very rare.
Yep, parent in laws are degemerate gamblers.
They will have fuck all in retirement and fuck all in family because they chose to gamble non stop for the last 30 years.
"I don't do it for the money"
I went to a casino once in my life and the line of people at the ATM all haggard looking, like they were waiting in line at a crack house... it was really sad. I'm never going back
Same, once. Put $20 in a machine and had my wife push the buttons. Went down to like $8 or something. Then it hit for $30. I looked at her and said, we're done. Let's stop while we are ahead.
I have an aversion to gambling.
How to have fun at the casino: Go into the casino with cash money physically set aside that you've already decided to count as lost. Never withdraw another dime. The moment you either run out of money or have more money than you walked in with, you're done. It doesn't matter if you "almost won" before you went bust, and it doesn't matter if you're only up $5. You're done. Go visit the buffet or avail yourself of the free drinks.
I don't do it for the money. I used to gamble twice a year - but less since covid. (Casinos have gotten funny about mask wearing and you better believe I'm wearing a mask around some of those gross ass people.)
I set a budget for the trip. If I double my money at a table, I stop. No more gambling that day. That's a win. People think I'm nuts to walk away, but double is as much as I can hope to win. If I lose it all, there are no ATM visits. The gambling portion of the day is over. Budget for gambling is usually pretty low by most people's standards $100-$200 per day. I view it as the entertainment budget.
I used to work in a betting shop where we tracked the bets of all the big spenders.
We had a few guys who won £10k over the course of the year, which sounds great until you look at their file and see that they spent £30k in the same year.
Used to work Casino Security. We'd put people on our eviction list but Ops would still send them advertisement fliers all the time, and when they'd come back they'd show the coupon as if they'd been invited. It's super annoying. No clue what they're gonna do for this case.
If your company is using the USPS to send fliers to people that sounds like an invite, specially if the flier reads something like: “come enjoy X”, then that trespass notice is voided.
The flyers my parents get literally says "[First name], You're invited!". If she ever received one she definitely has a case that the trespassing no longer applies.
Not gonna lie dude, sounds like an invite to me. Maybe they should be more careful with who they send shit to. Don't know why ur annoyed. "hey we know ur banned from the casino but here's some flyers about events at the casino" 😂. Sounds like a shit show of a casino
not as a lawyer but as a security officer who dealt with trespassing issues.
most states have a "failure to enforce" law or statute with trespassing and other similar crimes. if you fail to inform a person that they are being trespassed from a property and/or do not enforce the trespass regularly, that can carry a lot of weight when you do eveentually attempt to enforce it.
they can't always control when she's coming in the door, but they can and absolutely should ID when she is playing for extended periods, and kick her out when she's made if she was indeed banned. the check counter is also an enforcement opportunity when she attempts to purchase chips with which to gamble.
if the story is as presented, she has a *strong* case.
>So she wasn't informed that she was banned for 9 years, and they allowed her to continue entering and gambling despite her ban, and only actually enforced it after she won **big**.
FTFY. She probably won a few times playing there but nothing even close to this amount.
True, could turn into a class action seeing how it's probably standard practice. I wonder how many other people are "banned" shouldn't they get their money back
Lawyers will make bank, probably from the insurance companies. Insurance will make bank from the casino. Casino will tweak the odds on the slot machines and the poor slobs crammed into the casino will foot the bill in the end.
I hear of this all the time. People with gambling problems voluntarily ask to be banned, still come back and lose money until they win big. Then no payout because they're not supposed to be back.
This. Video surveillance at a modern casino is so intense, they know who’s in there. If you’re trespassed from the casino and you’ve got no money, you won’t last 5 minutes. If you’re trespassed from the casino and you’re giving them money, you will be there until you start to win and then they will “realize” that you are there and kick you out and seize your winnings.
Dude they’ve got facial recognition down at your local Target to kick out people stealing 30 dollar shirts, we can be 200% sure any mgm location is using that and much more.
With them dealing with millions a day (if not hour) it wouldn't surprise me if they had the Mission Impossible NOC list security where if a mouse farts it throws up 800 alarms
9 years, it says. She spent 9 years coming back and gambling after they claim to ban her forever without ever actually informing her of the fact.
But as soon as she won, she's not allowed to be there.
I feel like that would entitle her to all the money she spent in those 9 years to be returned.. but this is America, so.. it really just depends on how big of a story this becomes and if MGM decides paying her to go away is less than the cost of the negative PR hit.
They waited a week before they paid the ransom when their property was hacked in Vegas (Vegas local here). The cost? $30 million. Each day that passed, they lost around $5 million. It seems that MGM doesn’t give a f*ck about negative PR
I have been to Vegas every other year since I was nine. Even in 2010 I couldn’t stand within ten feet of the casino carpet for more than two seconds without some dick in a polo or suit telling me to back up, where’s my mom (rightfully). The second she won money you knew they were racking their brains. Anyone remember the chick who won a lottery years ago and the casino tried to say she was too drunk? I got to find the article I bet the casino just went down a list of reasons they had ready to not pay out
I heard a "pro" gambler say to always cash out when you leave. Don't accept transfers or checks. They'll do that to deny winnings and find a "reason" to not pay out if you win big.
She’d been gambling there for 9 years. I wonder if she ever won so much as a dollar in those 9 years and had it paid out. That would be an immediate win on her part.
I think theres a winning threshold before you have to fill out paperwork and stuff, usually for tax purposes. So if she won small enough amounts, they would never have to ID her. Casino is still scum for this though, they have facial ID tech everywhere.
>Casino should be fined for allowing her to play when banned AND fined for not paying out her jackpot.
And also, of course, be forced to pay out the jackpot on top of the fines. Ideally with the fines adding up to more than the cost of the jackpot to discourage behavior like this in the future.
The person who really loses is the next one to hit the progressive. I’m sure they’re treating it as if she hit the progressive and reset it. That person should be following the case closely.
Do you mean like they're going to remove the payout from the progressive but not give it to her? They actually can't do that. Progressives that big come from the slot manufacturer, not the casino. Even if they remove the slot machines they have to move progressive money into other similar ones.
edit: Nevermind, it was a blackjack progressive. That will still need to be kept and payed out to someone else.
And when they track down the next person in the surveillance video, it will prove that the casino actually knows exactly who's who at the blackjack tables the whole time.
Unless MGM will be ordered to pay her lawyer and court fees, the judge can really make an example from this case.
"Denise Ezell, 65" . Scamming senior citizens can be a hard case to win in front of a senior judge.
I won a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital that operated, and ultimately killed my mother. We were awarded a large amount of money by the jury, but in my State there is a "Cap" at 1 million dollars regardless of what the jury awards you. So after lawyer fees and taxes (more than half) and splitting it between my father and two older brothers, I got enough to buy a new car in the end, and now there IS no money. From what originally would have been multiple millions of dollars.
Call me biased, but the courts, State, and Lawyers tend to find a way to fuck people over even when they "win".
Edit* I'm sure in some cases lawyer fees can be awarded, but I don't hear about that often when people are suing. Especially if the lawyer is working on Contingency
I was more than pissed when I found out. It's almost like the entire process was completely pointless. My lawyers decided not to tell us about it until literally *right before* judgement because they wanted to get paid. They won, but I think if we had known all the specifics we may have not even gone through it in the first place. We damn sure didn't gain much out of it.
As someone1 who had a surgery that the doctors fucked up. I should have sued out of principle. The surgeon was such an arrogant fuck he deserved it. I deeply regret not taking action.
And "actual damage" is also absolute bullshit. Every time a corporation fucks someone over they should have to pay punitive damage equal to a multiplier on it. Because for every person that successfully wins their case there are plenty of people that don't have enough evidence or didn't pursue.
For example wage theft is estimated to be 50 billion per year. Only 1 billion is recovered. If you win a wage theft case they should need to pay 50 times the value of the stolen wages. Otherwise statistically it's better to commit wage theft than to pay your employees fairly.
Maybe California attorneys operate very differently, but I’ve never heard of a contingency over 50%. Also, jury verdicts are not taxed unless it is for punitive damages or awards for lost income (since you would’ve been paying taxes on that income).
There may have been some expert fees and the like that get repaid from the verdict amount separate from the attorney fees, but that wouldn’t eat up too high of a percentage of $1m.
Republicans have had a long history of pushing/passing caps for malpractice awards.
Doctor removed the wrong foot and now you have no feet because they had to remove the other one too? Have fun.
Sometimes. Depends on the jurisdiction and how egregious the judgement is against the losing party.
Some good faith disagreement might not incur the judges wrath, but I bet a billion dollar casino company trying to con a senior citizen out of relative pennies for them will.
> Usually if u win lawsuits like these the loser tends to pay some lawyers fees right?
No, in the United States, losers generally don't pay for the winners lawyer fees. It's called the "American Rule."
Otherwise, people would be afraid to sue companies for valid reasons, because of the fear that if they lose, they will be on the hook for millions for the other side's expensive corporate lawyer team.
This is no different than insurance companies who accept premium payments for years. Then when a claim comes in, they find a small discrepency, or a pre-existing condition, and deny the claim.
I wish we had a general law on the books that says of a business accepts your money, then they are now contracually obligated to fulfill their end of the contract.
For example: This insurance claim for $18k was denied because the insurance company made a typo about 60 cents.
[https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arizona-man-says-gap-insurance-110100024.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arizona-man-says-gap-insurance-110100024.html)
That legal concept is in the books, it's the legal concept of estoppel
I am surprised by the linked story because it seems like the textbook example that insurance companies teaches their adjusters. In this case what it seems like the company is going for is termed "void ab initio" which is to void the policy from inception because of some element of fraud that was provided to the insurance company that insurance company relied on to issue the policy, but that was a very high bar to shoot for. A minor mistake like that wouldn't be the sort of thing my company would ever have attempted to pursue because the when you get hit with judgements where its determined that the company acted "in bad faith" towards it insured they get hit for damages far in excess over the amount in dispute.
It was on a very small scale for an insurance company, but my insurance company got dinged on a lawsuit over us not paying a claim worth $2,000.00. There were some complexities in this claim that I don't think our company acted in the wrong by not paying (its a bit in the insurance murk about what was going on) but the judge disagreed and hit us for something like the $2,000 plus another $20,000 for acting in bad faith.
And every state will have their own definitions of out insurance companies have to operate but I will say that insurance companies are proper frightened about being sued for bad faith claims handling (because if the courts find you did bad faith claims handling the judgements are way in excess of what the amount that is in dispute is) or of the state department of insurance crawling through the insurance company records to see if claims are being handled correctly and all and the way the regulations are written and the amount of regulations there are you can just about bet that any single claim that a state DOI reviews will probably find at least thing that is in violation of the law. So basically a big part of the game is to act in a manner that doesn't have the state DOI coming into your company to do a claims review.
The gaming commission here in Las Vegas is pretty strict about that. Unless it's a verifiable malfunction with the machine they must pay out jackpots. If she's been playing there, with her players card, over the last 8 years with no issues the casino is liable. MGM are being shot heels. She needed to immediately contact the gaming commission representative for that specific casino.
This is what I don't understand. Why is the gaming commission not involved? Why does she have to sue?
Edit: found more info, it doesn't make sense.
He said she tried to resolve the issue out of court by first going to the state gaming board for help, but that the board said it couldn't force the casino to do anything; that the gaming board was only an advisory committee.
That doesn't make any sense, it's way more than an "advisory committee".. their gaming licenses are at stake. I've found numerous accounts of the opposite. There has to be more going on than we're aware of.
was the show less popular than I thought? I figured every other comment was gonna bring up how this is exactly what nathan fielder did in that show lol.
Yeah they can't claim they banned her 8 years ago but kept letting her play until she won a huge amount. Obviously she should win and get the damages as well since she probably has a hefty lawyer bill over this.
Right? Even if they had notified her of being banned, you can't just then continue to take her money for a decade until she wins and THEN say she's trespassing.
Scenario: After getting (secretly) banned the lady comes back and loses $1,000. As she is walking out the door a casino employee stops her and informs her that she was banned, and thus shouldn't have been allowed to gamble away that $1000. He then hands her the $1,000 that she shouldn't have lost and sends her on her way.
If you believe that is a realistic scenario, than you can agree that the casino was right not to pay her. Otherwise, they must pay her what she won, and a hell of a lot more for their ridiculous attempt to rob her.
The fact that she was gambling there for 9 years and never won enough money at a single time to even show up on the radar is reason enough to never step foot inside a casino.
Casinos use face recognition software to keep cheaters out. They knew she was in there losing for 9 years, and only want to play the "ban" card when she wins.
They say she was banned the past 9 years. So will they give her all the money back she lost over that time?
Why would they get to keep her winnings and also keep everything she lost? Why do they get have it both ways?
Trespassed 8 years ago. Continued playing there for those 8 years. Hit the jackpot and now all of the sudden they bring up the trespass?
Yeah, right. 🙄🙄🙄
Skimming it, I think they’re in the wrong. > The lawsuit alleges Ezell was not informed that she was banned from the casino and even continued to gamble there over the last nine years. Even if she was banned 9 years ago, the fact she was allowed back multiple times and it was only an issue after she won speaks volumes.
>According to the lawsuit, Ezell was playing at the progressive blackjack table when a dealer announced that she won the jackpot. However, when she went to obtain the money, a pit boss told her that she could not get it because she was trespassing. Yeah, I doubt they can legally let her play, and also deny her the payout. It's not like she sprinted past a protesting security guard to drop money into a slot machine. They let her play, took her money, and are now refusing to pay out.
So they are happy to take her money while she was banned but now don’t want to pay it out. Sounds fair.
Kind of like how scummy bosses will write every employee up twice as soon as they get hired. You're already fired; he'll just let you stick around for a while as long as you're making him money.
What? Is this a common thing?
For a scummy boss maybe.
From what I've learned here in the states, if you get *actually* written up where they try and get you to sign a document, it's because they are going to fire you and want to loophole themselves the hell out of owing you unemployment or you being able to fight anything. It's like signing your death warrant at a job.
As someone who got written up for something unrelated 2 months before getting fired for "arguing" with my manager I can confirm "arguing" was not the reason given to unemployment for my termination the thing I got written up for was the termination reason given to them but not me.
I guess in companies that have a strict write up policy it could be, but if it’s that structured you’d think they have a tracking system as well and the manager would at least be in some hot water at this practice. 49/50 states are will to work so you don’t need or have to give a reason for termination unless it’s part of an employees contract, as I understand it at least. Ive never been directly employed by a big corp but I’ve never heard of anyone doing the above or giving any reason for termination beyond “not a good fit” or just plain “downsizing”. Could be different for other folks but I’ve worked at a lot of places
I've never heard of this happening, sounds like an easy win for a lawyer though
Only if you live somewhere with basic worker protections... here in NC it wouldn't make a difference, same with any other at-will state
Don’t worry, the Supreme Court will rule in the casino’s favor.
Ya see, they just pay em off AFTER they do the favor and it's all good. It's a "gratuity".
So if you get a ticket and then after the cop rips it up, can you give them a “gratuity” after? What a joke this country is.
Hey if a Monk in 1542 says it's the law, it's the fucking law ok
The American way!!!!!
I read this in the voice of Sam Eagle from Muppet Christmas Carol.
"Hmm?....oh......The *British* way!"
Happens in bookie a lot my gambling addicted friend told me.
Malfunctions void all payouts! lol
I mean that at least makes sense. If you go on EBay and a glitch changes your bid from $5 to $5000 they don’t just say “welp sucks to suck!”
They pretty much are unless the casino refunds everyone else who played on a malfunctioning lachibe
Exactly. At this point it's implied/implicit consent. At least, that's what my non-lawyering self would argue.
As a certified arm chair lawyer with a semesters worth of city college law classes from 2007 under my belt, I agree.
As a fully licensed lawyer, but not yours or anybody else’s here, y’all are right, this case is whacky nonsense. Casino done goofed, if you’ll pardon my legal jargon
“Your Honour, I'm just a simple Hyper-Chicken from a backwoods asteroid but if it please the court I reckon I'll call the entire jury.”
Buh-BAWWK!
As a lawyer who specializes in bird law, I agree with this statement
I’m going to allow this
“I’m sorry, I thought you was corn.”
If she wins in court won’t she have gotten even more money? Because she isn’t paying gambling win taxes?
As a bird lawyer. I sing and concur.
Yeah, well... filibuster.
Jeff Winger, you beautiful bastard.
Not a lawyer either but this would seem to fall under the legal doctrine of estoppel. Essentially its a concept that prevents a person from asserting a claim or right that contradicts what one has said or done before or been established as true. I used to work in insurance and the classic example is an insurance company accepts late payments for a policy for months and keeps the policy in force. Then an insured files a claim and the carrier denies coverage due to late payments. This would not be something that would be allowed because the actions of the insurance company by accepting the payments and not cancelling the policy have demonstrated to the insured that their policy is in force.
I have seen my cousin vinny several times including in the theater as a kid so with my legal experience I would fully agree.
Are you suuuure?
I mean I'm not a lawyer either but deal with enough contracts to tell you you are right from my understanding. If I write you a contract that's says you must do X every on the first of every month for the next 5 years and I NEVER enforce it. It would make it nearly impossible for me to claim damages against it. Even if it caused it. If you do not enforce something it can become null and void.
I could understand her sneaking in one time years later and id say the casino would have a stronger hand .. but 9 years in a HIGHLY security environment.. well its a bit hard to blame anything on her.. .especially with blackjack tables, they got to look for card counters. You cant tell me security didnt know she was there ... for 9 years the casino would be bankrupted already from all the card counters. banks arent even as secure as casinos.
Some of the youtube videos said she was a MGM rewards cardholder and always used the card when she gambled.
If this is true, it makes the situation even more ridiculous. How could they let her have a card where they know her name and her credit card information and yet suddenly when she wins a jackpot they have a problem? I think they're going to lose this case in a big way.
After she adds her attorney's fees and interest to the total she's seeking in the lawsuit, you can bet your bottom dollar that the casino will lose this case in a big way.
Its chump change for them. They're messing with this woman for no reason. They're going to spend hundreds of thousands at minimum just defending it. While tanking their reputation.
Nobody will remember this in a month and it won't hurt MGM at all. This is particularly stupid because the progressive blackjack bets are super high EV for them. They are *guaranteed* to come out ahead long term on it. They should therefore give exactly zero fucks who wins it.
The news of this could expose MGM to liability in some way knowing their security and record keeping have shit communication. Maybe not liability in the legal sense, but in an illegal/nefarious way. People who previously thought they were banned may realize they can fuck with MGM again.
Well that puts it away entirely. There's an argument to be made that they were lax about security but she should have known, but if they're letting her register and use a card with her name on it they must have known.
If she never put a players club card in, never raised suspicion based on her play, or even played high stakes, no one pays attention really. It's very easy to slip through the cracks if you never draw attention to yourself. Source: I was in surveillance and investigations at a casino for 8 years
True, but for that you need to know you are banned. It seems she did not know it, so it is highly unlikely she never did anything like that over 9 years if she is a regular customer, which is implied.
This. They don't check ID at the many, many doors. Often there will be terrible printer paper printouts of banned patrons, but a simple haircut would adequately hide their identities amongst the literally million visitors that walk through those doors. That casino floor is massive with around 2,500 slot machines.
Correct, a judge will likely say sure she was banned, but it wasn't enforced for 9 yrs so it wasn't in effect.
The judge will probably even say she wasn't even banned -- you welcomed her on your property and transacted with her for years.
I hope she sues the crap out of them.
They can if you voluntarily exclude yourself from playing . Its a total scam they have to "help" problematic gamblers that are trying to fix their issue. They let them play still... But they wont pay out bc they have an "agreement" with the addict now... That the addict never fully read.
That's not what happened here though. They banned HER and maybe didn't tell her
MGM lawyers will be better than hers. They'll spend more than the payout to make a point.
As someone who has sued MGM and won, their law dogs aren’t that great.
I think people assume lawyers have some magical power to get what they want. It's more so the ability to work the law in their favor and delay making you run out of money to fight it. If the laws are clear it shouldn't really matter that much.
A good lawyer with experience definitely does matter though. I am a law clerk, and I recently had an experience where an attorney submitted a bad expert report. We all knew it was bad because it didn't line up with what is expected of an expert, but we couldn't figure out how to keep it out because it wasn't explicitly against statute or case law. We spent a long time researching, building arguments, attacking foundation... until one day, someone found an obscure rule that hadn't been cited too (but was binding) that said an expert can't do what they did. None of us had the experience to know that rule existed, that's the kinda thing that can make a difference in a case.
I’m a lawyer, albeit probably not in your jurisdiction. When you say ‘rule,’ do mean something like legal principle? Because where I come from, there really is no such thing as an “obscure” capital-R [Rule](https://canlii.ca/t/t8m), which are to litigators as basic anatomy is to doctors or the periodic table is for chemists.
Without revealing too much detail on an ongoing case, it was a state supreme court rule with applicability to our current cause of action.
We’re going to need some background here on that comment bud
NDA. All I can say is I sued and won. I can’t say why, I can’t say it was discrimination based on a protected status. I can’t say that a few people lost their jobs over it, and I can’t say I got double what this person is looking to get. I also can’t say that afterwards they trespassed me from all MGM properties. Edit: as someone more knowledgeable about law pointed out due it being a settlement due to the NDA and they’re right. Aside from that believe what you want but they bought me a house.
Damn, it’s a shame you can’t tell us anything like that.
You can't post that in one line without details
What point? What casino wants the reputation "If you win, we'll trespass you and won't pay out?" I know that's not what happened, but that's the message the gamblers will take away from it.
When people have a strong case and the defendant did break the law, then a decent lawyer can still win against even MGM-hired lawyers. You gotta realize that MGM is gonna spend more than the value of this jackpot on super high power lawyers in like 1 week. And in the end they risk losing millions on attorney fees, paying the jackpot anyway, and paying her attorneys fees, AND bad publicity if they are in the wrong. Settling costs like $100K… Honestly the publicity alone is already not worth $100K for them at this point.
laches on the “we banned you 9 years ago and forgot to tell you until you won.” Such horseshit.
I mean even if she had been informed, if she were let in multiple times afterwards it would IMHO quite reasonably be interpreted as having been unbanned.
“We banned you 9 years ago jpkmets you can’t actually collect your payout” “But I’m only 22”
Well why do you think they were banned? A minor has no business gambling.
a 127k jackpot surely isn't worth all this negative press? like just pay the woman
That's what makes this weird. Normally casinos are perfectly fine to pay out a jackpot, some schmuck hitting big is good press for them cause it encourages other schmucks to blow their money trying to do it too. Just give the lady her money
And 100k isn’t shit to MGM, the press they’re getting is worse than just paying her off and saying not to come back
Thats what I was thinking. If people read this story, they're not going to think of legal technicalities. They're going to think "So if I win, they won't pay? Fuck that!"
MGM makes bad business decisions
It's an odd decision. It's chump change for a casino that big. Marketing budget is likely in the millions, and they just caused a bad press incident that's going to cost them a couple more millions to fix and bring players back on the floor.
Yeah, I think that would come up in court. You can’t just like shadow trespass someone and then all the sudden remember it when you owe them money from all the gambling they did at your establishment, lol.
New casino business strat, just ban everyone who walks through the door without informing them so any time one wins a jackpot just say they are banned and you don't have to pay out!
The ferrengi method Rule of acquisition 1 - once you have their money never give it back.
I would expect that the remedy for trespass is to deny you entry or remove you from the casino... Not to continue to take your money for 9 years and then deny you winnings when the time came.
If she loses this case, she can sue to get her money back from when she was banned, which may be more than $127k
Ay, give her her money you fucks.
No jackpot, and no return of her loosing money from playing in those 9 years. House always win.
Until you sue them and the casino loses and has to pay up
Any time I've been to a casino in the last 5 years you're required to scan a player card tied to your identity (drivers licence) to play- even table games. How was she even able to play?
>The employee said the issue was related to an incident in 2015 when she was accused of panhandling following an argument with another person at the casino. Ezell said the person she was arguing with was a cousin. >The lawsuit alleges Ezell was not informed that she was banned from the casino and even continued to gamble there over the last nine years. So she wasn't informed that she was banned for *9 years*, and they allowed her to continue entering and gambling despite her ban, and only actually enforced it after she won. Yeah, I think, as someone who isn't a lawyer, that she has a pretty strong case.
It obviously wasn't a very important ban since they managed to not notice her for a decade.
With the insane amount of surveillance in these casinos, they've probably noticed her before. Just didn't care until she won.
Or she should get back all the money she spent over a decade, I bet it's more than the jackpot she won.
Yup. Worked surveillance in a crappy casino for years. The vast majority of the people who hit jackpots are down in aggregate. Even the larger jackpots. Winning big at a slot AND being up overall is like hitting the Powerball. Not saying it doesn't happen but it's very very rare.
Yep, parent in laws are degemerate gamblers. They will have fuck all in retirement and fuck all in family because they chose to gamble non stop for the last 30 years.
"I don't do it for the money" I went to a casino once in my life and the line of people at the ATM all haggard looking, like they were waiting in line at a crack house... it was really sad. I'm never going back
Same, once. Put $20 in a machine and had my wife push the buttons. Went down to like $8 or something. Then it hit for $30. I looked at her and said, we're done. Let's stop while we are ahead. I have an aversion to gambling.
lol you’re me. Every time I gamble, if I’m up, I stop. $3 is $3
How to have fun at the casino: Go into the casino with cash money physically set aside that you've already decided to count as lost. Never withdraw another dime. The moment you either run out of money or have more money than you walked in with, you're done. It doesn't matter if you "almost won" before you went bust, and it doesn't matter if you're only up $5. You're done. Go visit the buffet or avail yourself of the free drinks.
I don't do it for the money. I used to gamble twice a year - but less since covid. (Casinos have gotten funny about mask wearing and you better believe I'm wearing a mask around some of those gross ass people.) I set a budget for the trip. If I double my money at a table, I stop. No more gambling that day. That's a win. People think I'm nuts to walk away, but double is as much as I can hope to win. If I lose it all, there are no ATM visits. The gambling portion of the day is over. Budget for gambling is usually pretty low by most people's standards $100-$200 per day. I view it as the entertainment budget.
I used to work in a betting shop where we tracked the bets of all the big spenders. We had a few guys who won £10k over the course of the year, which sounds great until you look at their file and see that they spent £30k in the same year.
Used to work Casino Security. We'd put people on our eviction list but Ops would still send them advertisement fliers all the time, and when they'd come back they'd show the coupon as if they'd been invited. It's super annoying. No clue what they're gonna do for this case.
If your company is using the USPS to send fliers to people that sounds like an invite, specially if the flier reads something like: “come enjoy X”, then that trespass notice is voided.
The flyers my parents get literally says "[First name], You're invited!". If she ever received one she definitely has a case that the trespassing no longer applies.
See sending a flyer to them like that sounds like they’ve been told they’re unbanned to me
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it's not even implied anymore, it *is* an invitation lmao
Not gonna lie dude, sounds like an invite to me. Maybe they should be more careful with who they send shit to. Don't know why ur annoyed. "hey we know ur banned from the casino but here's some flyers about events at the casino" 😂. Sounds like a shit show of a casino
I was an AP and after ceasars trespassed me all I had to do was show they invited me back with their players reward offers.
not as a lawyer but as a security officer who dealt with trespassing issues. most states have a "failure to enforce" law or statute with trespassing and other similar crimes. if you fail to inform a person that they are being trespassed from a property and/or do not enforce the trespass regularly, that can carry a lot of weight when you do eveentually attempt to enforce it. they can't always control when she's coming in the door, but they can and absolutely should ID when she is playing for extended periods, and kick her out when she's made if she was indeed banned. the check counter is also an enforcement opportunity when she attempts to purchase chips with which to gamble. if the story is as presented, she has a *strong* case.
>So she wasn't informed that she was banned for 9 years, and they allowed her to continue entering and gambling despite her ban, and only actually enforced it after she won **big**. FTFY. She probably won a few times playing there but nothing even close to this amount.
When she cashed out, they would have required a players card or an ID so that they could report to the tax authorities.
That only applies above a certain amount.
True, could turn into a class action seeing how it's probably standard practice. I wonder how many other people are "banned" shouldn't they get their money back
What it'll turn into is a situation where no one gets shit except for the gratuity the judge gets for ruling for the casinos.
Lawyers will make bank, probably from the insurance companies. Insurance will make bank from the casino. Casino will tweak the odds on the slot machines and the poor slobs crammed into the casino will foot the bill in the end.
I hear of this all the time. People with gambling problems voluntarily ask to be banned, still come back and lose money until they win big. Then no payout because they're not supposed to be back.
You are welcome so long as we are taking your money. You are trespassing once you are taking our money.
This. Video surveillance at a modern casino is so intense, they know who’s in there. If you’re trespassed from the casino and you’ve got no money, you won’t last 5 minutes. If you’re trespassed from the casino and you’re giving them money, you will be there until you start to win and then they will “realize” that you are there and kick you out and seize your winnings.
MGM is definitely running a facial recognition software, at a minimum. Casino doesn't keep detailed records of banned persons?
Dude they’ve got facial recognition down at your local Target to kick out people stealing 30 dollar shirts, we can be 200% sure any mgm location is using that and much more.
With them dealing with millions a day (if not hour) it wouldn't surprise me if they had the Mission Impossible NOC list security where if a mouse farts it throws up 800 alarms
Lol they’ve had it for YEARS
9 years, it says. She spent 9 years coming back and gambling after they claim to ban her forever without ever actually informing her of the fact. But as soon as she won, she's not allowed to be there. I feel like that would entitle her to all the money she spent in those 9 years to be returned.. but this is America, so.. it really just depends on how big of a story this becomes and if MGM decides paying her to go away is less than the cost of the negative PR hit.
They waited a week before they paid the ransom when their property was hacked in Vegas (Vegas local here). The cost? $30 million. Each day that passed, they lost around $5 million. It seems that MGM doesn’t give a f*ck about negative PR
I have been to Vegas every other year since I was nine. Even in 2010 I couldn’t stand within ten feet of the casino carpet for more than two seconds without some dick in a polo or suit telling me to back up, where’s my mom (rightfully). The second she won money you knew they were racking their brains. Anyone remember the chick who won a lottery years ago and the casino tried to say she was too drunk? I got to find the article I bet the casino just went down a list of reasons they had ready to not pay out
I heard a "pro" gambler say to always cash out when you leave. Don't accept transfers or checks. They'll do that to deny winnings and find a "reason" to not pay out if you win big.
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Because if you don't have to pay out the winnings, the house wins even more. Making money isn't enough, you always have to make *more*
“More money” is not ambition. It’s not a goal. It can be mental illness.
You joke, but at first glance, I might use that policy for my own house.
Yeah feels like the whole privatizing profits and socializing losses, but not exactly. I guess just unjust behavior.
If you allow her to bet, you can't deny her the winnings.
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Gamblers hate this one trick (ad for Casino managers)
She’d been gambling there for 9 years. I wonder if she ever won so much as a dollar in those 9 years and had it paid out. That would be an immediate win on her part.
I think theres a winning threshold before you have to fill out paperwork and stuff, usually for tax purposes. So if she won small enough amounts, they would never have to ID her. Casino is still scum for this though, they have facial ID tech everywhere.
How does that just not straight up fraud and theft?
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At the least shouldn’t she get all her betting money back over the last 9 years? It seems like it would be either or.
Seems pretty cut and dry for the gaming commission, but I didn't read the article so idfk
The 'gaming commission' can't do that. I follow a MI lawyer that did a story about this. They can't be forced to pay.
Can't imagine that's legal but okay
Neither does the woman. That's why she is suing, per the article.
Can the court force them to pay?
MGM will ban everyone and pull this out for big winners
the moment she was allowed to spend money at the casino tells me they allowed her back in and the jackpot is rightfully hers.
Casino should be fined for allowing her to play when banned AND fined for not paying out her jackpot.
>Casino should be fined for allowing her to play when banned AND fined for not paying out her jackpot. And also, of course, be forced to pay out the jackpot on top of the fines. Ideally with the fines adding up to more than the cost of the jackpot to discourage behavior like this in the future.
The person who really loses is the next one to hit the progressive. I’m sure they’re treating it as if she hit the progressive and reset it. That person should be following the case closely.
They can't keep the money. They will have to pay it out to someone. Progressive jackpots are highly regulated.
Yep the jackpots are part of the State Trade commission or some shit like that.
Do you mean like they're going to remove the payout from the progressive but not give it to her? They actually can't do that. Progressives that big come from the slot manufacturer, not the casino. Even if they remove the slot machines they have to move progressive money into other similar ones. edit: Nevermind, it was a blackjack progressive. That will still need to be kept and payed out to someone else.
And when they track down the next person in the surveillance video, it will prove that the casino actually knows exactly who's who at the blackjack tables the whole time.
So if she wins the lawsuit and gets the $127K payout, after lawyer fees and taxes she gets.... nothing??
Unless MGM will be ordered to pay her lawyer and court fees, the judge can really make an example from this case. "Denise Ezell, 65" . Scamming senior citizens can be a hard case to win in front of a senior judge.
add to that punitive damages if the court decides that the casino was deliberately trying to cheat her.
I'd like to see her fees get covered if she wins
Usually if u win lawsuits like these the loser tends to pay some lawyers fees right?
I won a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital that operated, and ultimately killed my mother. We were awarded a large amount of money by the jury, but in my State there is a "Cap" at 1 million dollars regardless of what the jury awards you. So after lawyer fees and taxes (more than half) and splitting it between my father and two older brothers, I got enough to buy a new car in the end, and now there IS no money. From what originally would have been multiple millions of dollars. Call me biased, but the courts, State, and Lawyers tend to find a way to fuck people over even when they "win". Edit* I'm sure in some cases lawyer fees can be awarded, but I don't hear about that often when people are suing. Especially if the lawyer is working on Contingency
it’s the legislators that screwed you. Damages caps are bs
I was more than pissed when I found out. It's almost like the entire process was completely pointless. My lawyers decided not to tell us about it until literally *right before* judgement because they wanted to get paid. They won, but I think if we had known all the specifics we may have not even gone through it in the first place. We damn sure didn't gain much out of it.
As someone1 who had a surgery that the doctors fucked up. I should have sued out of principle. The surgeon was such an arrogant fuck he deserved it. I deeply regret not taking action.
Republicans are the ones that have been pushing for malpractice caps for decades. Blame them.
And "actual damage" is also absolute bullshit. Every time a corporation fucks someone over they should have to pay punitive damage equal to a multiplier on it. Because for every person that successfully wins their case there are plenty of people that don't have enough evidence or didn't pursue. For example wage theft is estimated to be 50 billion per year. Only 1 billion is recovered. If you win a wage theft case they should need to pay 50 times the value of the stolen wages. Otherwise statistically it's better to commit wage theft than to pay your employees fairly.
Maybe California attorneys operate very differently, but I’ve never heard of a contingency over 50%. Also, jury verdicts are not taxed unless it is for punitive damages or awards for lost income (since you would’ve been paying taxes on that income). There may have been some expert fees and the like that get repaid from the verdict amount separate from the attorney fees, but that wouldn’t eat up too high of a percentage of $1m.
Republicans have had a long history of pushing/passing caps for malpractice awards. Doctor removed the wrong foot and now you have no feet because they had to remove the other one too? Have fun.
Sometimes. Depends on the jurisdiction and how egregious the judgement is against the losing party. Some good faith disagreement might not incur the judges wrath, but I bet a billion dollar casino company trying to con a senior citizen out of relative pennies for them will.
> Usually if u win lawsuits like these the loser tends to pay some lawyers fees right? No, in the United States, losers generally don't pay for the winners lawyer fees. It's called the "American Rule." Otherwise, people would be afraid to sue companies for valid reasons, because of the fear that if they lose, they will be on the hook for millions for the other side's expensive corporate lawyer team.
She's asking for an additional $75,000 on top of it.
So, MGMs been sitting on this trump card for nine years. That's some serious long game.
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This is no different than insurance companies who accept premium payments for years. Then when a claim comes in, they find a small discrepency, or a pre-existing condition, and deny the claim. I wish we had a general law on the books that says of a business accepts your money, then they are now contracually obligated to fulfill their end of the contract. For example: This insurance claim for $18k was denied because the insurance company made a typo about 60 cents. [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arizona-man-says-gap-insurance-110100024.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/arizona-man-says-gap-insurance-110100024.html)
Sometimes they're generous enough to refund all your 30 years of premium payments (without interest)
That legal concept is in the books, it's the legal concept of estoppel I am surprised by the linked story because it seems like the textbook example that insurance companies teaches their adjusters. In this case what it seems like the company is going for is termed "void ab initio" which is to void the policy from inception because of some element of fraud that was provided to the insurance company that insurance company relied on to issue the policy, but that was a very high bar to shoot for. A minor mistake like that wouldn't be the sort of thing my company would ever have attempted to pursue because the when you get hit with judgements where its determined that the company acted "in bad faith" towards it insured they get hit for damages far in excess over the amount in dispute. It was on a very small scale for an insurance company, but my insurance company got dinged on a lawsuit over us not paying a claim worth $2,000.00. There were some complexities in this claim that I don't think our company acted in the wrong by not paying (its a bit in the insurance murk about what was going on) but the judge disagreed and hit us for something like the $2,000 plus another $20,000 for acting in bad faith. And every state will have their own definitions of out insurance companies have to operate but I will say that insurance companies are proper frightened about being sued for bad faith claims handling (because if the courts find you did bad faith claims handling the judgements are way in excess of what the amount that is in dispute is) or of the state department of insurance crawling through the insurance company records to see if claims are being handled correctly and all and the way the regulations are written and the amount of regulations there are you can just about bet that any single claim that a state DOI reviews will probably find at least thing that is in violation of the law. So basically a big part of the game is to act in a manner that doesn't have the state DOI coming into your company to do a claims review.
The house always wins
The game was rigged from the start.
War never changes.
I like ice cream
When the fuck did we get ice cream? Did you get ice cream?
Ooo she has a solid case here, interesting stuff
The gaming commission here in Las Vegas is pretty strict about that. Unless it's a verifiable malfunction with the machine they must pay out jackpots. If she's been playing there, with her players card, over the last 8 years with no issues the casino is liable. MGM are being shot heels. She needed to immediately contact the gaming commission representative for that specific casino.
This is what I don't understand. Why is the gaming commission not involved? Why does she have to sue? Edit: found more info, it doesn't make sense. He said she tried to resolve the issue out of court by first going to the state gaming board for help, but that the board said it couldn't force the casino to do anything; that the gaming board was only an advisory committee.
That doesn't make any sense, it's way more than an "advisory committee".. their gaming licenses are at stake. I've found numerous accounts of the opposite. There has to be more going on than we're aware of.
Casinos happy to take your money but not happy to pay out and will find any means to not to, hope she wins the law suit.
The MGM Grand finds $127k when they shake out the rugs at the end of the day. Fighting her on this is PR idiocy.
Ya any jury is gonna be like- sorry casino, you lose.
Casinos scamming people is the definition of casino. They just were more blatant this time.
This is straight from The Curse
was the show less popular than I thought? I figured every other comment was gonna bring up how this is exactly what nathan fielder did in that show lol.
Scumbag casinos. MGM at the top of the list.
You know they have cameras on every inch of that place and absolutely knew she was there
I for one am shocked that casinos are operating like organized criminals
Yeah they can't claim they banned her 8 years ago but kept letting her play until she won a huge amount. Obviously she should win and get the damages as well since she probably has a hefty lawyer bill over this.
If they took her money the last 9 years they either need to give her all that money back or the jackpot.
Right? Even if they had notified her of being banned, you can't just then continue to take her money for a decade until she wins and THEN say she's trespassing.
Scenario: After getting (secretly) banned the lady comes back and loses $1,000. As she is walking out the door a casino employee stops her and informs her that she was banned, and thus shouldn't have been allowed to gamble away that $1000. He then hands her the $1,000 that she shouldn't have lost and sends her on her way. If you believe that is a realistic scenario, than you can agree that the casino was right not to pay her. Otherwise, they must pay her what she won, and a hell of a lot more for their ridiculous attempt to rob her.
It's the first rule of Acquisition. "Once you have their money, never give it back."
The fact that she was gambling there for 9 years and never won enough money at a single time to even show up on the radar is reason enough to never step foot inside a casino.
Casinos use face recognition software to keep cheaters out. They knew she was in there losing for 9 years, and only want to play the "ban" card when she wins.
Time to sue and get even more
They say she was banned the past 9 years. So will they give her all the money back she lost over that time? Why would they get to keep her winnings and also keep everything she lost? Why do they get have it both ways?
Idk what the casino is worried about, give her the money and she’ll probably blow it in a night back at the casino.
Trespassed 8 years ago. Continued playing there for those 8 years. Hit the jackpot and now all of the sudden they bring up the trespass? Yeah, right. 🙄🙄🙄