In 2010, the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet brought a lawsuit against Poker Stars, suing the online poker room for $870 million for allegedly operating illegally in the state from 2006.
Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate ruled in the state’s favor and ordered the online poker room to not only pay the money supposedly lost by 34,000 PokerStars players during that time period, but to also triple the lost revenue in the form of a fine.
PokerStars immediately launched an appeal of the ruling and this week, an Appeals Court ordered the lawsuit to be dropped against its parent group, The Stars Group. The Appeals Court said that the state could not use its current gambling laws as a means to force TSG to pay the fine.
“Allowing a complaint, like the one put forth by the commonwealth, to move forward would lead to an absurd, unjust result,” wrote Judge Glenn Acree. The 3-judge court ruled that Kentucky should not be allowed to sue on behalf of players who lost money to the online poker site, brought after a federal government crackdown in 2010 which soon became known as Black Friday.
“We applaud the decision of the highly respected three-judge panel of the Kentucky Court of Appeals,” said Marlon Goldstein, the executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Stars Group. “The merits of the case prevailed, and we look forward to putting this matter behind us as we sharpen our focus on executing on our growth strategy going forward.”
