On December 12th, a three judge Appeals Court panel will convene in Louisville, Kentucky. The group will hear oral arguments in a case involving the seizure and potential forfeiture of 141 internet gambling domain names, including those belonging to some of the world’s largest online poker rooms such as PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Full Tilt Poker. Lawyers from the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (iMEGA) will be among those present. Joe Brennan, Chairman of iMEGA, sat down with Poker News Daily to talk about what we can expect in the landmark case.
After a ruling on favor of the State was handed down by Judge Thomas Wingate in a Frankfort court room in October, lawyers from iMEGA and the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) filed a petition to the Kentucky Court of Appeals to intervene. The two organizations argued, among other things, that the owners of the 141 internet gambling domain names would suffer irreparable harm if their sites were ultimately forfeited. In essence, a formal appeal would be too late. iMEGA and the IGC noted that the State did not have jurisdiction to act in the first place. A three judge Appeals Court panel accepted the petitions and granted that the case be stayed, which essentially means that the final forfeiture hearing, which had been scheduled for December 3rd, is now postponed indefinitely.
On how critical it was that the Appeals Court panel ordered that the case be stayed, Brennan commented, “It’s important because everything from the beginning had been moving at a quick pace. The case got into court without notice to the domain owners and moved quickly for the seizures. Had iMEGA not gotten on the ground, who knows what could have happened.” On October 16th, Judge Wingate ordered that unless domain name owners blocked access by Kentucky residents, their URLs may be forfeited. In response, a flurry of online poker rooms, initially including the Merge Gaming Network and Microgaming Network, stopped accepting new Kentucky customers. The latter has since stopped taking new U.S. accounts entirely.
How the hearing and any subsequent developments in the case will play out is anyone’s guess. However, Brennan told Poker News Daily, “I believe that what you’ll have [on December 12th] are oral arguments. The Court has combined the hearing between the IGC and us. The Court can take petitions as they’ve been filed, entertain oral arguments, and then deliberate for a decision. I think that’s the way it will go.” Whether the proceedings will just occur on December 12th or over multiple days is currently unknown.
Many in the industry have wondered how the case has managed to advance as far as it has. If the State seized the domain names without proper jurisdiction and used dubious means to do so, then why has a formal forfeiture hearing already been scheduled? Brennan weighed in on this burning question: “I just think this was something so far beyond the norm of what Judge Wingate would see. You have a person with no judicial track record on this and he had no experience to draw upon. Usually, judges will err on the side of the State rather than a defendant in an unfamiliar action. When the Governor describes the industry in the most unsavory terms possible, you can see why it would have happened.”
The case will resume in Louisville at 10:00am Eastern Time on Friday, December 12th. We’ll have the latest for you as it develops right here on Poker News Daily.