Quote:
Originally Posted by SingleVoyce
Michelle,
Do you have any idea when the cases would actually be tried if the defendants decide to take that route? If it does go to trial, will it be a jury trial?
Much will depend on which level of court they filed suit...if they elected to file in the Harris County courts, it could easily be a few years. After all, what seems to be a relatively simple suit between Kebort and one of the Chodrows was filed in March of last year and has had no hearings yet...next setting of any type is not until mid-July.
However, I could see a class action taking even longer precisely because of the other issues. A court could easily run with the premise that no action is ripe until such time as the other matters are resolved.
Further, as noted, filing suit makes it easier for the management to walk away by filing BK. Chip holders will get next to nothing if that occurs, and a payout likely still would not occur until after the criminal charges are disposed of.
An effort to gin up a federal suit would likely result in the a Motion to remove the case back to a local court since there really are no federal questions that likely could be raised (successfully) by players in a class action.
Filing suit will cost a player holding chips valued at $4800 far more than they might hope to recover. But, hey...maybe some like spending $10-15K to recover $5K
Patience is the far better course of action here...
On edit...if the question was dealing with the pending criminal charges, again the timeline will vary. When a defendant is out on bond, it is not much of a challenge to push cases multiple years. By example, a parole case I recently worked on saw the intoxication-related death occur in 2015 but a plea did not occur for more than three calendar years.
Jury trial is the option of the defendant in any criminal case. Where there are hyper-technical issues, it is entirely possible to lose a jury with the minutia. If you are relying upon nullification, then a jury becomes a better choice. But at the end of the day, I don't see the criminal cases ever seeing a trial setting.
Last edited by michelle227; 05-11-2019 at 12:34 PM.