In a move that has rocked the poker world, professional poker player Clonie Gowen filed a multi-faceted lawsuit on November 14th against her alleged former employer, Full Tilt Poker, and the individuals and corporations that are part of the Full Tilt operation. While rumors and accusations swirled this weekend regarding the status of this lawsuit, Gowen and her relationship with Full Tilt Poker, Poker News Daily has waited until there was adequate information regarding the case. On Tuesday, Poker News Daily obtained the full 20 page complaint that Gowen has filed in Nevada District Court.
In this complaint, Gowen not only names Tiltware, Inc. – the developers of the Full Tilt Poker software – as a defendant, but also names both Full Tilt Poker sites (their “dot com” and “dot net” arrangements), Pocket Kings Ltd., Kolyma Corporation (foreign corporations set up allegedly after the start of Full Tilt Poker), and each individual member of what is called “Team Full Tilt,” which includes Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman (identified by Harman-Traniello), Mike Matusow, Allen Cunningham, Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius (his name is misspelled on court documents as “Antonious”).
Gowen’s attorneys, Howard & Howard, Attorneys PC of Las Vegas, state in their complaint five areas that Gowen is seeking relief from. They allege that there was a breach of contract, a breach of fiduciary duty, a breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, and fraud. A full look at the complaint spells out where Gowen feels she has been victimized by the Full Tilt corporation as a whole.
The suit is based on facts stated by Gowen that she was hired by Full Tilt to be one of their “celebrity players” and that her compensation for that job was a one percent ownership of the company and any extended parts thereof. From 2004 until November 11th of this year (when Gowen was informed that she was being released by Full Tilt), she played under the “Team Full Tilt” banner, wore their logos and promoted the site at poker tournaments around the world, pointing out in court documents that she did not receive any buy ins for tournaments or other financial backing from the company for that time other than her 1% ownership. She also alleges that there were undisclosed regular payments to the members of Team Full Tilt that started in May 2007 and that she was denied the same compensation.
Gowen’s legal representation backs up her claims by stating that there was a verbal contract offered by Bitar in 2004 and that, in November of 2007, Lederer offered her $250,000 for her “past performance” with the company, which Gowen refused. Her refusal was based, according to the complaint, that she was due much more as per her 1% ownership. Her attorneys have also stated that, after 2007, Gowen was “ostracized” from the group and, in effect, pushed out of the organization. Gowen is seeking her one percent of the entirety of the Full Tilt operation, which her attorneys have estimated at $40 million, with the additional possibility of punitive damages adding on to that amount.
Jim Kohl, one of the attorneys in charge of the complaint, said to Poker News Daily, “We are confident the allegations will be proven at trial. Clonie has been wrongly denied her compensation and, after we go through the process of discovery, we feel the court will find in our favor.” Attempts to contact officials at Tiltware in Los Angeles failed, as the phone number was out of service.
Poker News Daily will continue to monitor the case and update it appropriately.
If my poker math serves me correctly, 1% of $40,000,000 is $400,000. Less legal fees of, say, $200,000. Hmm, seems like she will be stuck $50k on the settlement she was offered. And as a lawyer once told me ‘no case is judge proof’, so she m,ay well lose the whole lot.
steve, when a complainent wins a case such as this, the defendent has to pick up the lawyers fees.
Steve….they estimate FTP at 4 BILLION 1% of which is 40 mill
@Steve, think the 40, million is the estimate value for the 1% of the company, not what the company is worth.
If she wins her legal fees will most likely be paid by Full Tilt. It commonly included in lawsuits by the plantiff. The $40 million is what it is worth today. 1% of what she should have been paid and then interest compounded will be a lot higher than $400,000. Then she will receive punitive damages.
I met Clonie at a WPT bootcamp in March and she is a down-to-earth person with a willingness and passion to teach & play the game. I don’t see her as the kind of person that would bring a frivolous lawsuit to the table. Especially since she quoted that Chris Ferguson was one of her dearest friends (She even called him during class and he spoke candidly w/ us via speakerphone). I think there is much more to this story. In practically every pic I’ve seen of her she is sporting the FT logo proudly. She even endorsed it at camp. Think about it…why would she do this and place her head on the ol chopping block and single herself out if she didn’t feel that she has been unjustly treated ie screwed!?? Guess we will have to wait and see….
Love the irony of the Full Tilt Poker banner ad at the top of this page.
Be interesting to see if she gets anywhere against a whole bunch of foreign corporations in a Nevada court. Surely they won’t submit/admit to US jurisdiction of them in a million years for fear of opening cans of worms way bigger than 40 M.
Clonie is a wonderful person, very kind and conciderate of others.
Clonie would never have done this ,had she not been put in the position that she had no
other options.
Full Tilt Poker is aweful anyways. To withdrawal your money is near impossible and if you get the card they charge you for your own money. The site needs to get regulated to make it more fair for consumers. They take your money easy…but getting it is a nightmare. Anyone else agree?
I am not surprised at all of this. I personally have had account issues at Full Tilt that has cost me approx. $3K (peanuts in the scheme of things, but a lot to me). Its a long story, but Full Tilt in my mind is NOT Trustworthy. Perhaps this is a bit of karma headed their way.
shawn i play at fulltilt i cash out once a week and recieve my check in 5 to 8 days on every check one time i had a problem with it bouncing but other than taht never had a problem
I have to agree with ” fuel hellmyth” entirely. If I could prove these sites cheating I would sue them myself. How dumb do they think we are…some loser at every table in every game plays crap and takes out 3 to 5 players all-in with his 3 8 offsuit???? i know sometimes one can get lucky but come on every time …whatever. If your that LUCKY why wouldn’t you be at the slots? Oh you can’t cheat them….anyways good luck Clonie…
As OiCuRaDonk says, its just all luck. People just shove allin with 83 and win every time. LOL If you can’t spot the sucker at the table in 20 minutes, you are the sucker.
Who cares? FUll TILT deserves it!!!!! Hope he continues to cheat any poker site….
right back at them and for all the stupid people who plays on them. As for CLonie how can she say anything over a oral contract. Get it in writing baby!!
She will likely only receive attorneys fees if there is a “prevailing party” clause in the contract.
She has no case i agree get everything in writing.
She has a case if she can show she was paid. It demonstrates that there was a contract by performance. Why would they pay her if there was no contract? That’s the way a court would look at it.
concerning my above posting…. she will only have to show some form of payment.
I am amused at the bias and ingorance in the discussion here or any forum on this topif of whether Clonie is in the right or wrong.
You can’t judge her behavior in this case based on your personal meeting with her and how she treated you.
You can’t judge her behavior in this case based on whether she’s a good poker player or bad, and whether she’s pretty or ugly.
All the forums seem to be judging her on these issues above when related to this case.
people need to stick to the facts.
It is my opinion that any sane adult who enters into an oral contract worth large amounts of money with no written contract, is nuts. If I entered into a contract worth thousands or millions I would absolutely insist it be in writing and I wouldn’t consider signing it until an attorney that I paid, who is working for me, went over it with a fine tooth comb.
Who in their right mind would enter into such a huge business deal with only an oral agreement?
Next I have to say that if she’s clean in all this, then why is she posting in several forums under various anonymous names, advertising this lawsuit? If you are sincere about the suit with no intent to hurt the poker world in general, and you’re a person with good character, wouldn’t you keep this private?
example this thread on 2+2:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/clonie-suing-full-tilt-344129/
the poster it appears is Clonie and she has 3 different user-names she uses on this site. All 3 poster names come from the same IP, and all 3 seem to defend Clonie in their posts.
If her lawsuit is sincere and she’s a person of integrity, why would she start this thread on that forum and on other forums? She’s intentionally drawing public attention to this lawsuit. Why? You have to ask yourself, why would she do that.
If you research all the details of this lawsuit, it seems that she was given some $$ from FT/Lederer personally and for whatever reason they decided to not have any connection with her any further. because of (we can assume) standard incompetet workmanship within the business, that they didn’t keep organized paper work, decided to let her go, and did not in any formal or informal way let her know about this. At that point after she complained, from what I’ve read, she was offered $$ by Lederer and she turned it down.
here’s the thing, no one can claim she’s on the list of top players anywhere, she knows it, we all know it, so why would she have been offered a contract bigger than all the other players who represent FTP? That makes no sense.
Did FTP handle this from the beginning intelligently and professionally? hell no. They f’d up and for such a huge business they sure has hell don’t know how to run a business smoothly. She apparently was paid $600,000 once as payment- where are the records of this and if there are none, why? all under the table ? what a bad way to run a business and bad for the poker world in general.
But on her side of the issue, she is playing a dangerous game on what she may be bringing down to the poker industry. No one in their right mind would believe she was offered such a huge stake in the company much alone a stake bigger than Chris Ferguson gets, or Jen Harman gets, or the rest get- that’s ridiculous.
I think her case will be thrown out with a small compensation but either way, this endless judging of her case based on her poker skills, her looks, and whether you met her and she was cordial to you, makes all the posters on the topic look just dumb.
BJ-20yrs ofpoker said – everything i wanted to say– BUT i will go as far as to say her popularity is not that great… She shouldve taken the 250K and been happy. If somebody offers u that type of money, Do you turn it down? She is a total putz and ding dong of a female. Just read how her lawsuit got dismissed recently… What idiot goes into a verbal aggreement as a contract worth tens of thousands of dollars or more? SHE IS THE BIGGEST DONK OF A POKER PLAYER!!!
She probably woke up with a conscience one day, realized she was promoting a fraudulent site and wanted out. Full tilt is garbage, promoted by poker players (never trust a poker player!). The odds are terribly askew and i can’t get my money out… i go to the withdraw screen and my whole computer freezes. I can’t get in touch with anyone and it’s very frustrating. I ask at the tables if anyone’s got their money out and never get “yes” as a response. Seems like a pyramid scheme, in which the money goes all the way back to the house. Online gambling isn’t legal in my country, yet i see dozens of full-tilt commercials everyday… we need protection from these thieves!
i cashed out $1700 on here one time, haven’t won a decent hand since :-) So I think something is in the water there.
I don’t know anything about the odds and outs or hand vs pot vs implied, let alone blocker cards, variance or reverse polarazation of a bluff, or positional plays, I’m just learning myself.
i got money trapped by the federal investigation into fulltilt poker and pokerstars.Where do i sign up for a classaction?