Gambling addict loses final bet with bookmaker

14/03/2008

The High Court has ruled that a man with a self-confessed gambling problem is not able to claim over £2m damages against William Hill bookmakers.

Graham Calvert, who was a successful greyhound trainer from Tyne and Wear, brought an action against the bookmakers William Hill for over £2m because this was the sum that he lost in the period in which he claims the Bookmaker should not have allowed him to gamble. Mr Calvert accumulated the enormous debt in a six month period starting in June 2006, despite having asked William Hill to exclude him from placing any bets under their self-exclusion policy. He had his account frozen but his addiction to gambling proved irresistible as he set up a new account in the same name. It was under this new account that his gambling addiction spiralled out of all control and he would bet hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time, often using borrowed money. His bets include the now infamous £347,000 punt that he put on America to win the Ryder Cup in 2006. This is the largest sum ever bet on a professional golf tournament, and unfortunately he lost.

Judge Briggs held that a duty of care could not be imposed uniformly on bookmakers to ensure that their punters do not gamble when not in control of their habits. However he maintained that in this instance; where the customer in question had expressly stated that he needed help with is addiction and wanted to be excluded from betting under the bookmakers own scheme, and where the bookmaker had taken responsibility by recognising his problem and freezing his account, a duty of care between bookmaker and customer existed. The Judge took great pains to stress the individual nature of these circumstances and the imposition of a duty of care.

Mr Calvert still lost the case, however, because the Judge found on the facts that such was the consuming and self-destructive nature of his gambling addiction that he would have lost the money whether William Hill had barred him or not, albeit perhaps at a slower rate. The Judge found that the bookmaker's breach of its duty of care was not causative of Mr Calvert's enormous losses; therefore they were not liable for them.

It remains to be seen whether a similar action will succeed in the USA. Arelia Taveras, who was a lawyer, is claiming approximately $20m from seven casinos. In the course a gambling sprees, some of which lasted five days continuously at card tables, she lost her job, her apartment and even her parents' house. The casinos have denied that they were at fault because they said it is almost impossible to spot when a customer has a gambling problem.

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