“The issue we must decide is whether the complaint in this case adequately pleads the asserted claims and contains allegations sufficient to establish the threshold issue of whether any of the named plaintiffs have standing to bring those claims.”Īt the heart of the trial court ruling was whether the tribes – led by the operators of Harrah’s Southern California and supported by the California Nations Indian Gaming Association along with tribes controlling the Chumash Casino, Cache Creek Casino, Viejas Resort and Casino, Sycuan Casino, Pechanga Casino, Morongo Casino, Agua Calliente Casinos, Win-River Casino, Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, and Valley View Casino – qualified as private persons to secure standing to sue over business competition.
“Although the plaintiffs broadly frame the issue on appeal as whether they, as American Indians, have standing to redress their grievances in California state courts, it is actually much narrower,” the judges said in their ruling.
The ruling, issued by a two-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego, confirmed a March 2020 ruling by a San Diego County Superior Court judge which found that the tribes lacked standing to sue. Tribal interests, who hold the exclusive right in California to offer banked gaming, sued nine different card rooms in southern California arguing that, by violating the principal state law requiring non-banked gaming within their establishments, the card rooms had engaged in unfair competition and served as a public nuisance.ĭefendants in the case included late Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler Casino in Gardena, Commerce Casino, The Bicycle Casino, Hollywood Park Casino, Oceans 11 Casino, Player’s Poker Club, Seven Mile Casino, Crystal Casino, and the Elsinore Hotel and Casino. Under California law, card rooms are required to offer non-banked versions of banked games, allowing players to serve as a so-called “player/dealer,” and bet on the dealer’s hand and against all other players. The tribes argued that a number of California’s card rooms were offering banked games, wherein the house has a stake in the outcome and bets against players, such as traditional blackjack. A San Diego-based California appellate court knocked down a challenge from California’s tribal interests hoping to halt alleged violations of by the state’s gaming control laws prohibiting so-called “banked gaming.”
0 kommentar(er)
