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Newsletter | February 2016, Issue 1
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Litigation
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Does a Casino Operator Have a Duty of Care to Protect Against Excessive Gambling Losses?
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Recently, the Supreme Court ruled en banc that casino operators cannot be held liable for failing to protect their customers from suffering excessive gambling losses at the casino. Kim & Chang successfully defended the casino operator in obtaining the Supreme Court’s favorable en banc decision.
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Background
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A customer, who had gambled at a members-only gaming room at the casino, brought an action against the casino operator, Kangwon Land (“KL”).
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For three years and six months, the customer had been using so-called “soldiers”37 for his gambling games. He alleged that KL employees were well aware of the fact that he was violating the casino’s betting ceilings. Rather than preventing him from playing, the customer alleged that KL employees encouraged him to continue playing, which caused him to suffer damages in the amount of KRW 29.3 billion.
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Supreme Court’s Ruling
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The Supreme Court adopted Kim & Chang’s developed “principle of self-liability,”38 and ruled that this principle should apply to the legal relationship between casino operators and their customers, and dismissed the customer’s claim in this case.
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The Supreme Court reasoned that while it is true that casino operators are comprehensively regulated for public policy reasons, unless there are clear provisions in the relevant statutes stating otherwise, casino operators have no duty to protect their customers from suffering excessive monetary damages, and do not need to put their customers’ interests above their own (commercial) interests.
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Therefore, the Court concluded that even if the KL employees were in violation of the restrictions on bet price ceiling, there was no tort violation by the casino operator, since KL did not have the duty to protect their customers.
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Kim & Chang’s Development of the Principle Adopted by the Supreme Court
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Kim & Chang successfully engaged in an in-depth analysis of the various factual inter-relationships that arise in a casino game situation. We examined court cases from the U.S., Australia and Europe, and developed the principle of “self-liability” for application in the casino game context.
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| 37 |
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Players who make bets on behalf of another person with that other person’s money.
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Any individual who engages in an act according to his or her own free will should be held responsible for the consequences of such an act, and no liability resulting from the act should be shifted or attributed to others.
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Back to Main Page
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For more information, please visit our website:
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