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• Phil Ivey Vs Casinos

The legal battle, a civil not criminal one, hinged on whether the actions of professional US poker player Phil Ivey during games of Punto Banco at the Crockfords casino in London over two days in. Nov 03, 2016 Ivey vs Crockfords game over? Three judges of the Court of Appeal considered all the facts of the case, as they were presented to them, and confirmed the verdict of the High Court. The decision means that Ivey won’t be seeing any of his $9.6 million in baccarat winnings that were withheld by the casino. The allegations against Ivey state that he defrauded the casino by winning in Baccarat by use of the method of edge-sorting. A 2016 ruling by Judge Hillman ruled that Ivey was in breach of contract against the Borgata but not liable for fraud. The ruling forced Ivey to repay the $9.6 million he won at the casino plus additional damages. A lot has been occurring within the legal battle between Phil Ivey and his backers against the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in New Jersey. A claim filed by Ivey’s backers, stating that the garnishment of his July 2019 World Series of Poker (WSOP) winnings by the State of Nevada should be voided out, has seen a challenge brought against it by the Borgata brand. The UK Supreme Court Judges have agreed to take a fresh look at the Phil Ivey vs. Crockford’s Casino £7.8m punto banco case, giving the poker player new hope of getting his mitts on a much.

Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords [2017] UKSC 67 is a UK Supreme Court case that reconsidered the test used for determining dishonesty.^[1]

Facts[edit]

Phil Ivey, an American professional poker player, played and won a series of games of Punto Banco—a variant of baccarat—at Crockfords Casino in London, owned by Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd. The casino did not pay out the £7.7m he had won, as they believed Ivey had cheated by using edge sorting. Ivey sued the casino to recover his winnings.

Both Ivey and the casino agreed that the contract contained an implied term forbidding cheating. Ivey's lawyers argued that the appropriate test for whether cheating occurred was the same for contract as it was in section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005, and that cheating necessitated dishonesty, which had not been shown.

At trial, Mitting J held that cheating had occurred and the contract was thus invalid. The Court of Appeal upheld the trial judge's ruling 2–1.

Decision[edit]

The Supreme Court held that Mr Ivey had cheated, and was thus not entitled to the payment sought from Genting Casinos.

Lord Hughes considers at length whether the existing test for dishonesty is acceptable, noting that dishonesty in civil contexts is judged objectively. The court noted, albeit obiter, that the second component of the two-stage test developed by the Court of Appeal in R v Ghosh was inadequate and replaced it with a purely objective test: would the act conducted be considered dishonest by an ordinary, reasonable person?

Reception[edit]

In the High Court case of DPP v Patterson, Sir Brian Leveson observed that:

Given the terms of the unanimous observations of the Supreme Court expressed by Lord Hughes, who does not shy from asserting that Ghosh does not correctly represent the law, it is difficult to imagine the Court of Appeal preferring Ghosh to Ivey in the future.^[2]

David Ormerod and Karl Laird criticised the direction of the law following Ivey, arguing that the lack of a subjective element will lead to uncertainty and a possible human rights challenge under Article 7, citing a prior challenge to Ghosh.^[3][4]

References[edit]

1. ^'Ivey (Appellant) v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords (Respondent)'. The Supreme Court. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
2. ^[2017] EWHC 2820, at [16].
3. ^R v Pattni [2001] Crim LR 570
4. ^Ormerod, David; Laird, Karl (2018). Smith, Hogan, and Ormerod's Criminal Law (15th ed.). Oxford. p. 881. ISBN9780198807094. OCLC1014163712.

External links[edit]

Ivey V Genting Casinos Lawteacher

One month on from our talk on dishonesty and lack of integrity in disciplinary proceedings given at the 4 New Square Professional Liability & Regulatory Conference, the law has undergone a significant change. This has had the effect of rendering our topical review something of an historical artefact.

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down judgment in Ivey v Genting Casinos [2017] UKSC 67. By a unanimous judgment, the Court held that R v Ghosh [1982] EWCA Crim 2, no longer represented the law and that directions based upon it should no longer be given. The Supreme Court explained its analysis by reference to the example cited in Ghosh, that of a man coming from a country where public transport was free to the UK, where he travels on a bus without paying. The Supreme Court held that the second limb of the Ghosh test was unnecessary to save this man from a finding of dishonesty. He would inevitably escape conviction by the application of the first – objective – limb, because to determine the honesty of his conduct one must ask first what he knew or believed about the facts or circumstances of his actions. Because he genuinely believed that public transport is free, there is nothing objectively dishonest in his not paying for the bus (paragraph 60).

Ivey Vs Casino Poker

The Supreme Court concluded that the test for dishonesty in criminal proceedings would henceforth be that set out by Lord Nicholls in Royal Brunei Airlines v Tan and Lord Hoffman in Barlow Clowes – “if by ordinary standards a defendant’s mental state would be characterised as dishonest, it is irrelevant that the defendant judges by different standards”. Paragraph 74 of the Supreme Court’s decision will now become the touchstone for all criminal, civil and – it must inevitably follow – disciplinary proceedings:

“… When dishonesty is in question the fact-finding tribunal must first ascertain (subjectively) the actual state of the individual’s knowledge or belief as to the facts. The reasonableness or otherwise of his belief is a matter of evidence (often in practice determinative) going to whether he held the belief, but it is not an additional requirement that his belief must be reasonable; the question is whether it is genuinely held. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people. There is no requirement that the defendant must appreciate that what he has done is, by those standards, dishonest.”

Ivey Vs Casino Buffet

There are three points which are of particular note in the regulatory/disciplinary field following this decision:

• First, the decision of Bryant v The Law Society [2007] EWHC 3043 (Admin)which imported the test from Ghosh as set out in Twinsectra v Yardley[2002] UKHL 12 into the civil contest, has been impliedly overruled. Ivey must now represent the law in the disciplinary field. As Lord Hughes commented at paragraph 57(4), the existence of different tests in civil and criminal fields was an “unprincipled divergence”.
• Second, Ivey has not diminished the importance of the findings relating to the state of the defendant’s actual knowledge or belief as to the facts; it is only the defendant’s belief as to the reasonable person’s standard of honesty as applied to those facts which is no longer relevant. It would be wrong to suggest that the test is objective only.
• Third, the judgment raises a question about the role played by lack of integrity in disciplinary matters. This will no doubt be aired in the Court of Appeal in the not too distant future, permission to appeal having been granted in SRA v Wingate and Evans [2016] EWHC 3455 and sought by the SRA in Malins v SRA [2017] EWHC 835 (Admin), a decision deprecated by the Divisional Court in Williams v SRA [2017] EWHC 1478 (Admin).

Ivey V Genting Casinos Summary

A link to the judgment in Ivey can be found here and Helen Evans’ note of the decision is available here.

Article written by Paul Parker and Benjamin Fowler.

Phil Ivey Vs Casinos

Disclaimer: this article is not to be relied on as legal advice. The circumstances of each case differ and legal advice specific to the individual case should always be sought.