That first paragraph is a little unfair IMO. I've NEVER stated you should take a very literal interpretation, what I've repeatedly said is that intent is very important because the sentence in question doesn't necessarily mean what everyone seems to think it means. At this point it's just opinion and speculation, and obviously I'm biased, but if it was over zealous PR putting a positive spin on a negative situation, that's A LOT different in my mind than someone intentionally trying to mislead. I'm not going to tell ANYONE what they should think, but I would suggest that everyone be open minded enough to realize there is more than one possible interpretation.

Parsing words and using semantics without figuring intent is just a giant exercise in who can twist whose words into meaning what they want them to mean. Like I said, I realize I started it, but a 50 page thread on analyzing every sentence in detail and finding every possible meaning is not something I'm prepared to do, but I was asked about that specific part of the statement.

The distinction that I am making is that all the statement says is that there was enough money won on the Girahh acconut to have won the challenge. It doesn't directly speak to (1) or (2) although I will give you that this:

I agree with. In fact there are a few conclusions I agree with:

1) poor decisions on the statement. IMO it should have just stated that he was DQ'd for MAing and announced the rightful winner (Michael Drummond). No attempts at 'positive spin' should have been made. I'm sure everyone's heard the phrase about 'lipstick on a pig' and I'm just not a big fan of trying to sugar coat things. I would rather just get it out there and work on repairing any damage afterward.

2) He made completely false statements that were quoted. I guess this kind of goes with #1 but I think it deserves to be separate.

3) I do feel like we took appropriate actions at the time those actions were taken with the knowledge we had. Ultimately, though, he was associated with us, he let us down, and by result we let our users down, regardless of how well or poorly things were handled in the process.

So yeah, you'll get no arguement from me on those particular points. What I take objection to are implications of being complicit in his actions and that we would intentionally mislead our users.

-Rizen

I beileve I explained this as well. If you don't feel that i did please let me know.

-Rizen

The distinction that I am making is that all the statement says is that there was enough money won on the Girahh acconut to have won the challenge. It doesn't directly speak to (1) or (2)

that is not all the statement says....it says to have legitimately won the challenge....which does speak to his points 1 and 2 as the money was not won legitimately for those reasons. I agree that you should stop arguing semantics. Simply put the statement should have left out the word legitimately since with it it becomes untrue. It may not have been intended but intent has nothing to do with wether it was factually true or not.

Next time you guys have a Promotion, how about just excluding all Merge/Lock employees and their families from entering it, like almost every other sweepstakes/promotion in the world does. This way it won't reek of a fixed result if your sponsored poker prodigy wins it.

+1

I just want to say we haven't forgotten about this.

Is Lock willing to tell us anything more now? It's been a while since they announced they were going to pursue legal action.

I wouldn't expect anyone to forget about it. I can't comment a lot other than to say it's still a very serious matter from our end. I will update as soon as I have something significant I can release.

-Rizen

It has been more than a month with essentially no info. The "legal action" argument works for a while but will begin to wear a bit thin if nothing emerges soon.

I'm sure you can understand that legal action is a process that simply doesn't have an exact time frame on it, and obviously has limitations on what can be said during that. As Rizen said above, we are not ignoring this situation. It is just not an appropriate time to comment when we don't have any information that we can give out at this time.

I hope you understand and we appreciate your patience.

Are you a Lock rep/employee?

I think players have been pretty patient so far. Yes, I am familiar with legal processes. Initiating action does not prevent you from saying anything at all but there are obv some things which it would be disadvantageous or innappropriate to discuss in any detail.

Hi sir I am just a sponsored pro for the site. I try and help out when I can here on the forums. I just wanted to assure you that we do understand your concern and it will not be ignored. If there is additional information, I am quite sure a statement will be released.

I think it's also important to understand that the purpose of us filing legal action isn't to placate the public, but to win the case. To that end it's important to make sure the best course of action is taken to achieve that goal, and that's what's being done.

I will definitely continue to release any information I'm allowed to in the mean time, and feel free to follow up either here or with me.

-Rizen

The main questions aren't related to your legal action against girah - they're related to how Locks security department handled (or didn't handle) his cheating. Whatever he did or didn't do in his relationship with Lock is between you and girah - how your security department acted is between you and your customers.

It's a bit difficult to understand how legal action against girah somehow means you suddenly can't release any information about anything.

I agree with Minus that I don't see how the results of the internal investigation into the audit done on the girah account during the Lock challenge couldn't be revealed without impacting a potential legal case.

We already know that the audit wasn't completed. We need to know how far it went, why it wasn't completed, etc.

Agreed.

While I accept some info should be legitimately witheld, at least once legal action is underway, it is also clear that Lock is choosing to withold information beyond that.

Havent forgotten that Lock is incompetent and corrupt. Seems everyone else has.

Bump.

When will there be any news of the lawsuit?

I will post info as soon as I'm able to. As I've said before it's important that everything is handled the right way and with the best chance of success. No one is trying to forget anything or sweep anything under the rug, but the purpose of the suit is because there is a legitimate legal matter to resolve.

Thanks

-Rizen

So you don't think any interaction between security and Girah might be at the very heart of any legal issue? I understand the thirst for information, but not thinking that issues of security in this matter might be key in any litigation would be incorrect IMO.

-Rizen

Bumping to keep this issue in view. I don't think we can afford to let questions about Lock's role in the Girah scandal, whatever that may be, to just slide.

Bump

As a recovering lawyer who spent years grinding it out in the world of litigation, I can tell you that when you are preparing a lawsuit against someone, it's really critical to maintain strict control over the facts that underlie both your claim and your defense to an anticipated counterclaim.

Controlling the narrative is a really critical part of a winning litigation strategy. You only want to introduce into evidence the facts that support your side of the dispute. From a strategy perspective it would be highly irresponsible to release information to the public about the audit because it would guarantee that this information can and will be introduced into evidence by the defense if it at all helps them in their defense or any of their counterclaims - which it certainly not a preposterous assumption at all. Why would Lock do this when the full contours of the legal dispute haven't even taken shape yet? It may seem like a straightforward case of "he cheated, so we took action", but litigation is virtually never this straightforward and you can count on the case taking a lot of twists and turns before it is over. There's a reason why lawyers are always telling their clients to STFU...it's because in the effort to win the spin war, clients can say things that make it very difficult to win the legal battle. It's much better to win first then spin later.

Certainly, Lock's attorneys are well aware of this and are very mindful of the likelihood of a counterclaim (no matter how little merit it may have, counterclaims are very standard responses for a defendant in civil litigation), and want to be sure that as little information as possible gets put out there. Why do the defense's job for them?

I'm not saying this because I think we should all forget about it and go on our merry way, but I do think it's important that you all understand why Lock is being tight lipped about its internal control procedures and how they acted (or failed to act) in this specific instance. I wouldn't hold the fact that they haven't given details on the audit and the investigation into the audit against them. If nothing ends up happening ever, then yeah, I can see you coming to the reasonable conclusion that they just wanted to sweep this under the rug. But at this point it's much more plausible that keeping a lid on these details is a key part of their legal strategy and winning the actual case is more important to them than placating a few curious members of the public.

Is there any proof legal action is being taken by Lock? I understand that you may not be able to release any information regarding the case, but you should be able to prove that this "legal" action is being taken. If not then we can probably assume nothing is being done about this.

What kind of proof are you expecting to see? Time and date stamped photographs of lawyers sitting in a conference room going over documents and rubbing their hands together? I'm sorry for being a smartass about it, but there's a lot that has to happen in between the time a claim arises and a court action is commenced. Just because you don't know what they are doing doesn't mean that nothing is going on. It means that you don't know, and that's how it should be for the reasons I explained earlier.

For now, all we have to go on is the word of the folks at Lock that they are pursuing legal action. There's not much more any of us can or should realistically expect to see. If legal action is being pursued, it's at the pre-filing stage, and you're not going to know any details until the case is actually filed. That's the right way for Lock to go about this, and it's just wrong to assume that nothing is being done because they haven't been broadcasting a play by play.

I have no idea what the statute of limitations is on whatever claim they are looking to make in whatever jurisdiction this would be brought in. In the US it varies from state to state but typically you're looking at the 1-3 year range for breach of contract and fraud.

One other thing to keep in mind: a lot of contracts have binding arbitration clauses in them requiring that disputes be adjudicated outside the state-run judicial system. If the legal framework for the action here is the Lock pro contract and this contract does have an arbitration clause, it's entirely possible that we will never know how this ends up being adjudicated. Also, in the US, well over 90% of lawsuits end in confidential settlements... it's actually quite rare for people in a legal dispute to have it end up publicly aired in court.

If I were to advise you of anything, it would be to be patient and expect nothing. At least this way you won't be disappointed. Hopefully you (and everyone) will be pleasantly surprised, but honestly, companies aren't huge fans of public airings of their dirty laundry, and a poop-stained scandal like this certainly qualifies as that.

Your response was much too long. I cut out the rambling and left what you were trying to say above. That said I am sure many of us trust the word of the Folks at Lock, especially considering how they handle their payouts of promos.

Edit: I do not expect a response from Lock about the scandal/legal proceedings. Would be nice, but ain't gonna happen. It won't matter once regulation occurs anyways, they will be gone by that time.