Sam A. Antar’s attorney, Matthew Litt, filed a notice of appeal Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, asking that his client’s case against BetMGM, the Borgata, and various other defendants be reinstated.

In his civil complaint, Antar alleged that BetMGM kept trying to ply him with five-figure casino bonuses despite knowing he had a massive gambling problem. To wit, between May 2019 and January 2020, Antar said he gambled at least $29 million, mostly through BetMGM’s online casino. Antar’s addiction was so intense that it led to a pair of prison stints related to illegal investment schemes he’d concocted to help pay off his gambling debts.

In dismissing the lawsuit on Jan. 31, Judge Madeline Cox Arleo sided with the defendants, writing, “Despite the inclusion of gambling addiction as a substance addiction disorder in the DSM-5, the New Jersey legislature … has not yet seen fit to require casinos to prevent or stop inducing gambling from those that exhibit problem gambling behavior.”

Litt maintains that BetMGM and others violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act in their treatment of Antar. Shortly after the Jan. 31 dismissal, Litt launched Bettor Lawyers, a law practice and advocacy group focused on casino advertising and promotions. And as he waits out the appeal process, Litt plans to get busy on the legislative front.

Casinos must be on board

It goes without saying that the casino lobby in New Jersey is a powerful one. And for them to sign off on any duty of care standards when it comes to their relationships with customers, they’ll have to be convinced that it’s in their own best interest — something that Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, believes is already the case.

“There absolutely should be a duty of care. It does a major disservice to the industry by not having one. It’s a massive risk,” Whyte told US Bets earlier this month. “If the industry doesn’t adopt a duty of care, at some point it will be established, and it could really bite the industry. If a court somewhere finds a really egregious case and slaps down a very draconian finding, that could have massive negative impacts.”

But one needn’t look any further than the years-long push to get smoking banned in Atlantic City casinos to recognize the glacial pace at which regulatory change can often come to gaming floors.

“Things don’t typically happen in Trenton unless somebody’s pushing for it,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “It would take something that is going to satisfy the industry, assuage the industry. And by that I mean when there is a powerful interest in the state, as casinos certainly are, things typically don’t move absent some consensus, resolution, or compromise with them. It’s just easier not to move it until everybody’s on board. 

“The casino smoking bill is a really good example. There’s a lot of consensus, but the casino industry is pushing back. So it’s unlikely to me that it can be done without the industry on board, and that’s a tall order because it’s putting some responsibility on them that they don’t have now.”

‘A sort of quasi-friendship’

Not long after Whyte made his comments to US Bets, the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy article about a Pennsylvania psychiatrist and problem gambler who fell deeper into debt at the behest of various casinos’ VIP hosts, which is who Antar dealt with at the peak of his addiction.

For his part, Litt would like to see New Jersey’s legislature scrutinize the behavior of VIP hosts.

“They’re acting in a sort of quasi-friendship with the gambler where they’re texting them,” said Litt. “I would love for text messages between a casino employee and a gambler to be outlawed. I think that’s a huge problem fraught with peril. It’s not just in Sam’s case. We’re seeing it in a number of places where that relationship is in the dark until the gambler hits rock bottom and the VIP host walks away.”

Litt would also like to see a tightening of regulations around the treatment of “lapsed players” — customers who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to gamble with a casino for an extended period of time. Antar, for instance, could be considered a lapsed player, and despite his ongoing legal battle with BetMGM, he was still receiving bonus offers from the operator as recently as two weeks ago.

“Every casino, in their safe play rules, will tell you if you feel like things are getting too hot, take a break,” explained Litt. “But then if you take a break too long, you start getting emails to convince you to come back. The casinos will say there’s an opt-out, but people don’t do that. I’d like to see the legislature shift the burden to the casinos, where if someone doesn’t opt back in after 30 days, they can’t contact them.”

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