Alabama casino owners have hunkered down in the court system for a last stand to protect their slot machine-style gambling businesses. But some legal experts believe the barrage of cases and motions is geared toward dragging out the gambling battle until January, when new political leaders are instated.
“They are not trying to find a legitimate legal answer to a legitimate legal question,” said Birmingham attorney Eric Johnston, who heads Citizens for a Better Alabama and has fought against gambling for years. “All they are doing is delaying. … It’s a war of delay and attrition, and they’ve got the money to do it. They don’t have the law on their side and they know it. But the legal system will let them carry on the way that they are carrying on.”
When increased pressure from gambling lobbyists failed to persuade lawmakers to pass bills legalizing gambling over the past several years and Gov. Bob Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling began investigating and acting against casinos in late 2008, gambling supporters began turning to the courts to save the businesses.
Johnston said the courts usually are used to resolve legitimate claims but these cases involve “people with political interests trying to use the political system to advance their private and political positions.”
“They (the gambling magnates) were sailing along just fine (before the task force was formed) and nobody was bothering them,” he said, referring to Attorney General Troy King and many district attorneys who allowed the casinos to thrive without fear of law enforcement actions.
“They got greedy and tried to pass legislation that would give them the monopoly on it and would exempt them from the law altogether because they knew what they were doing was unlawful. These are the bills we’ve seen for the past few years. … They knew they were operating outside the law, and … that’s why they were seeking these constitutional amendments.”
Some gambling opponents have questioned the ethics of the high-paid attorneys representing Alabama casinos, but the line separating good legal practices and ethics violations is unclear.
Tony McLain, general counsel for the Alabama State Bar, said his office receives about 1,500 complaints each year against some of the state’s nearly 17,000 licensed lawyers. But according to him, “less than 8 percent” of those have any merit. Still he said the bar investigates the appropriate complaints and handles them as a grand jury would in a criminal case.
McLain would not say whether any casino lawyers had been brought up on ethics charges, but he did say none had been found guilty of ethics violations.
Initially small cases were brought before Alabama judges by casino owners trying to protect their businesses. But now a group of casino magnates whom Johnston calls the “big boys” — VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor, Greenetrack CEO Luther “Nat” Winn and Country Crossing owner Ronnie Gilley — are inundating the legal system for their purposes.
“It’s the big boys hiring legions of lawyers and going to court on everything they can dream up to make a case out of — the latest being the federal court case (involving McGregor and Winn’s gambling locations) saying their civil rights were violated under the Voting Rights Act,” Johnston said.
“Normally, if you’ve got a case and you want to resolve a question of law, you hire lawyers from one firm to represent you,” he said. “Occasionally you may have several lawyers in a case depending on the number of parties in the lawsuit. They’ve got different lawyers in different jurisdictions in different cases, and they are doing different things. … Every time you turn around, it’s different lawyers making a comment.”
Brady Rigdon, deputy to Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls, said these types of legal strategies have not been used by smaller casinos and illegal gambling establishments.
“It’s not really the same situation,” Rigdon said.
“When you’ve got 10 to 15 machines or less, they don’t necessarily seem to care about them. They tend to write those machines off when they get caught.”
Johnston said this is not the case with the “big boys.”
“They are grasping at straws trying to do anything they can to delay Bob Riley’s task force until after January, when the new governor is sworn in,” he said.
Gubernatorial candidates Dr. Robert Bentley and Ron Sparks have both said they will disband the task force after taking office.
Bentley said he is opposed to gambling but will handle illegal gambling through other channels rather than the task force.
Sparks plans to work to legalize “electronic bingo” gambling — at least in some areas — as well as a lottery, if he is elected.
Either way, the thought of no more task force has given hope to some facility operators.
Johnston likened the large casino bosses’ actions to those of a mad man.
“They don’t want to get bound down,” he said. “It’s like a mad man you are trying to hold down, and he’s twisting and turning and trying to do damage trying to get away.
“They are trying to keep the law from catching up with them,” Johnston explained. “They’ve failed in the Legislature. They’ve failed in the court system. They can see the promised land. January is not that far away.
“But if they can stop the Supreme Court from ruling until after January, that takes the pressure off.”
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