In what is becoming an extremely contentious battle in the Nevada court system, professional poker player Clonie Gowen has fired the next shot at Full Tilt Poker, amending her earlier complaint to add to the list of defendants, introduce more allegations and push for an expedited discovery procedure.
In the amended thirty three page complaint filed on January 22nd by Gowen’s attorneys, Howard & Howard, Attorneys PLLC of Las Vegas, two defendants have been added to the litany of companies that allegedly comprise the Full Tilt operation. Pocket Kings Consulting, Ltd. of Ireland and Tiltproof, Inc. of Ireland – which allegedly respectively run the operations of Full Tilt and the customer service segment of the organization – bring the number of defendants in the case to twenty, including other companies that make up the remainder of the organization and the players who are billed as official members of “Team Full Tilt”.
In addition to the added defendants, Gowen’s attorneys have also added several significant allegations to the six that existed in the original complaint filed in November. The amended complaint also provides more information on the original points of Gowen’s case, including that there was a meeting in 2004 where all of the members of the team were told of the agreement. Among the new grievances presented are the usage of Gowen to promote the site and the earnings that the usage garnered as well as misrepresentation by the organization that Gowen was to earn one percent of the company from 2004 until her dismissal from the organization in late 2008.
On January 29th, Gowen’s legal team filed an application to expedite the discovery process regarding the case. In this filing, Gowen’s attorneys have requested an immediate discovery interview against Ray Bitar, who is alleged to be the CEO of Full Tilt, and Chris Ferguson. According to the eighteen page document filed with the United States District Court in Nevada, both Bitar and Ferguson have information – including e-mails, telephone records and personal knowledge – that could potentially be lost if the discovery isn’t conducted immediately. It is also alleged in this complaint that there could be a loss of information, through either destruction or deletion, that could prove critical to the case.
This is just the latest in what has become one of the more fascinating cases regarding an online poker rooms operations. In November, Gowen’s litigation team filed the original complaint. At the beginning of January, the Full Tilt side, represented by the legal team of Olson, Cannon, Gormley and Desruisseaux of Las Vegas, filed a motion for dismissal of all claims in the original argument due to the vagarities that were presented in the original complaint.
Gowen is asking the courts to grant her the financial amount of her one percent ownership of the company, which her attorneys estimate as $40 million of the company’s worth of $4 billion. All legal documents are available online and, as future information comes to light, Poker News Daily will keep pace with the legal action.
