Joined: Jan '10
Location: United States
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 410
Feb. 12th. 2010 Posted at 10:39 P.M. ET Clonie Gowen's $40 million lawsuit against former sponsor Full Tilt Poker is finally over.
The lawsuit, filed Nov. 14, 2008, sought $40 million in damages from Full Tilt Poker, Tiltware, a series of related companies, Tiltware CEO Raymond Bitar and a group of Team Full Tilt players, claiming, among other things, breach of contract.
Gowen alleged that in 2004 she was offered a 1% stake in the site in exchange for her services as a celebrity endorser, but never received compensation.
Concluding that her claim of an agreement with the site lacked detail and that she was never offered a legal partnership with Full Tilt because she was never held responsible for the site's losses prior to becoming profitable, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jones dismissed the case for a third and final time this week.
"Nowhere in the allegations does Plaintiff allege, consistent with a general partnership, that the agreement made her liable for 1% of Full Tilt Poker's losses before it became profitable," the decision reads. "Therefore, it is not plausible that a partnership, limited or general, was offered."
Judge Jones granted a motion to dismiss the case back in April of 2009, but the lawsuit was not thrown out in its entirety.
Gowen was given leave to amend the complaint to include just Full Tilt Poker, Tiltware, the related companies, Bitar and Howard Lederer as defendants and appeal the decision to dismiss the case.
In a decision released in October 2009, Judge Jones both denied Gowen's appeal and granted Full Tilt's latest motion to dismiss the newly amended complaint.
However, the suit was not dead yet. Judge Jones granted Gowen leave to amend the complaint a third time to include only Tiltware.
Lawyers for the former Oklahoma teen beauty queen re-filed, but this week's decision put an end to the suit.
Gowen, who has over $1.6 million in career tournament earnings, is currently in Adelaide, Australia playing as a PokerStars sponsored player in the ANZPT event there.
Gowan was just out for a quick grab. The proof of that was in that she could not produce any legitimate documatation of being in a partnership with FTP.
Joined: Jan '10
Location: United States
Age: 59 (M)
Posts: 410
Posted by Davoodoo:
The house always win ...
no chit, This is always why you sign a contract, I remeber seeing her advertise for them, My theory and this is from thin blue air, You think if she won the WSOP mail event they woulda treated her like this
Joined: Jan '09
Location: New Zealand
Age: 36 (M)
Posts: 463
Its hard to sue a company thats overseas (im assuming) and not publically traded (not on stock market). I don't think it comes under US law? i could be totally wrong of course
Joined: Jan '10
Location: Finland
Age: 54 (M)
Posts: 41
This case is very important since there are American citizens residing in America involved. FTP is located overseas but Tiltware is American. Lederer, Ferguson, Ivey etc. have some kind of stake in FTP. I hope they know what they are doing. At least they could argue that poker is not explicitly illegal in America. Individual states may, of course, have their own legislation. Companies that offer sports betting, bingo etc. have a different legal situation and may want to say no to American customers.
