Las Vegas Casino Sued By Man Claiming To Have Lost $500,000 Whilst Drunk
What happens in Las Vegas is supposed to stay in Las Vegas. Unless it was Super Bowl weekend, and you got drunk and lost $500,000. That’s the reason behind California gambler Mark Johnston’s lawsuit against the Downtown Grand, according to a report from The Washington Post.
No, Johnston said he didn’t lose it on the big game, when the Seattle Seahawks clobbered the Denver Broncos 43-8. But Fox News reports that those who did in the state of Nevada lost nearly $20 million that weekend on Super Bowl bets.
Johnston’s story starts on the Thursday before the game. He arrived in Las Vegas with his girlfriend. The drinking began in the limousine from the Las Vegas airport to the Downtown Grand. He then drank some more during dinner with friends, and he doesn’t remember anything after that.
Johnston has been a Las Vegas regular for three decades, and was unaware of his losses until Sunday, when he sobered up.
He is claiming that he was blackout drunk, and the Las Vegas casino, which opened last November, kept serving him drinks and loaning him money, when he was clearly intoxicated.
“I feel like they picked my pockets,” Johnston said. “I feel like they took a drunk guy… like a drunk guy walking down the street, and you reach in his pockets and grab all his money.”
The time he blacked out happened during the hours he was playing blackjack and pai gow at the Vegas casino, Johnston said. His legal team said they will build their case on eyewitness accounts and surveillance video.
Nevada law prohibits casinos from allowing visibly intoxicated people to gamble and receive free drinks.
The Grand has plans of countersuing Johnston, according to his attorney, Sean Lyttle, for trying to shirk his gambling debts. The Las Vegas casino issued a statement saying that Johnston had put a stop-payment order on the markers, which are also known as casino credits. Johnston is also seeking damages from the Grand for tarnishing his name.
“It’s certainly an extraordinary case. This is not a story that I’ve ever heard before, where someone was blackout intoxicated where they couldn’t read their cards, and yet a casino continued to serve them drinks and issue them more markers,” Lyttle said. “It’s a very heavy-handed and unusual approach that we haven’t seen in this town in a long time.”
A spokeswoman for the Las Vegas casino would not comment, as it is pending litigation.
Nevada’s Gaming Control Board is investigating the situation.
The Grand is not the only Vegas location going through a rough patch. A recent report from The Inquisitr stated that the Las Vegas Sands hotel and casino admitted some client data was stolen in February, after hackers breached their security system.
