Yea. Pretty soon Tilt will be nothing but a huge pile of liabilities.

Truth. And so funny watching some of these people criticize others for actively trying to get their money back.

If/When fulltilt does the right thing and returns our funds, lawsuits like this will go away. Until then, F them.

Exactly. Likewise any investor knows the issue with DOJ goes away if FTP settles with DOJ. I mean no investor that was thinking about investing FTP is clueless.

Investor1:"Hey bob I just saw on 2p2 that FTP is being sued by the DOJ."
Investor2: "Those bastards at FTP!"
Investor1: It gets worse. Now there is a new thread about how FTP hasn't paid players in over 2 months. 5 whole guys just sued FTP for hundreds maybe thousand of dollars"
Investor2: "I feel so used. We trusted FTP and did absolutely no due diligence on our own. I mean we were all set to give them $200M cash tomorrow on a handshake and verbal promise. Call off the deal".

Any entity looking to invest in FTP knows they need to repay the players and if they do the lawsuit is moot. They also know about DOJ and will make settlement with DOJ part of the terms.

This class action suit will, i'm told, allow other players to tack on their claims. If you pull your fingers out, you too can be part of the bankruptcy documents.

Without investments, FTP will be forced to declare bankruptcy, and players with a court judgement are much more likely to get at least some of their money back.

Of course FTP is capable of paying players. They could have liquidated the entire company, sold all assets, and used that cash to pay players. Doesn't mean that would be the best outcome for FTP owners but they *could* have done that.

Judge has to certify the "class" first. Then yes the lawyers can seek extra plaintiffs to add to the class action. Any player who meets the conditions of the class could join.

Which Full Tilt shell company declares bankruptcy?

It's a shell game of gigantic proportions. Move the money from company to company, country to country until it totally disappears.

Any non-gambling business person would not consider floating Full Tilt under the current conditions. The Rush Poker software must have enormous potential. The name and player loyalty good will has to be nonexistent.

Which would be anyone, in the US, with money on FTP that has not has access to it from April 15, 2011 right?

And does anyone know how many different companies make up FTP, seems like at least 7 or 8.

This is worth repeating.

Before someone would have a legitimate chance in court would they not have to prove that what that were doing was for sure legal?

Since the DOJ indictment mentions the running of an illegal gambling operation, wouldn't it be possible that a judge could just decided to throw all these cases out when they pop up?

It depends. The judge could reduce the scope of the class or even dismiss it as class action if he feels no viable class can be formed. Obviously a method that has been successful for companies is to prevent the class from being certified. Then the lawsuit is merely an individual lawsuit and they can settle with just the named plaintiffs.

If the class is certified it will be a public record and players can see for themselves if they meet the scope of the class.
To those who feel this is a bad idea they always have the choice of not being part of the class. They can take their chances as an unsecured creditor of an offshore criminal enterprise.

The details of certifying a class are beyond my knowledge. Maybe some of our resident lawyers can provide some insight.

Nah...they mirror ftp vs ps who did choose to pay out.

I think it is interesting that the lawsuit filed in the US and not in Ireland or the UK courts.

Makes me think they want to go after the personal wealth of the FTP founders.

IMO, this lawsuit harms the former player-now creditors of FTP. It is another barrier to completing the sale of FTP. Also, if FTP does not have or acquire the money to pay its former players, then how can the plaintiffs collect on any judgment? Also, any legal fees awarded to the plaintiffs' law firm (Are the plaintiffs associated with this law firm?) will just reduce the recovery by other such player-creditors.

lawsuit is asking for treble damages as determined by court in addition to paying out money owed to players. ianal and have no idea what sort of figure this could involve, but seems relevant to someone thinking of buying the company.

Wonder what the LA Times headline might be tomorrow..."European Partners pull out of FTP purchase pending class action...."

The suit is asking for money to pay players NAMED in the suit. Nobody can file suit on your behalf. In a class action you still need to join the class in order to be part of suit.

Also the suit at best would take months to resolve (and likely much longer). If FTP has paid players prior to a judgement they can simply move to dismiss.

So any potential investor's liability is limited to what FTP owes players.
Does anyone think that is a bad idea?
Should investors be able to acquire FTP and ignore the liability to players?

If they pay the players then the lawsuit is moot. If they don't pay the players then FTP should be liquidated by the courts to repay every ****ing cent.

The LA Times article hasn't been independently verified anyway (that I have been able to find up until this point), so all this discussion of a European investor could be the product of heresay and an overzealous writer anyway.

I like how they wrote everyone's full name, but still wrote Gus instead of Gustav.

the whole suing for damages under the Rico act is hilarious. So an individual who decided to leave the law industry to immerse himself in the poker world, spends plenty of time reading 2+2 daily where the environment is characterized by things like paranoia if its ok to put the name of a poker friendly bank out in the open in a thread post, constant threads about processors being seized, etc. claims he would not have had money or been in this situation if it wasnt for Full Tilt's devious scam and bank fraud actions to make the situation possible. Yeah, so all this time hes been playing to generate an easy income and lifestyle he thought Full Tilt's business was completely open in the american eye. Its complete hypocrisy to try to say you didnt realize there was some gray business practices going on in process of servicing the american market. The truth is you knew about it but it was such an easy way to make a lifestyle that paid much more than the majority of other careers that you consciously made the decision to play, now you need to take responsibility and admit the truth of the situation instead of trying to blame FTP for influencing your money based play due to bank fraud scam or whatever it said.

Suing for them pretty much taking an interest free loan on our money and not paying back balances that our rightfully ours is justified, but trying to get extra damages from claiming you had NO IDEA that there might be some unethical business practices going on as Full Tilt serves poker to an American market that was clearly in the legally gray area is stupid and shows some greedy qualities.

Hmm...there IS one plaintiff from Jersey.

Speculate, speculate, speculate.

The suit claims that Chris Furguson owns at least 5%, but gives no corresponding %
for Howard, Ivey or for anyone else. How is it that they know the % ownership of
only one of the owners?

I wouldn't be surprised if there are lawsuits started in other countries if FTP doesn't open back up soon and non-US players can't access their funds.

Did you read the "venue" part of the document at all?

I just did a pretty brief read of the whole thing.

Initial thoughts:

1) The case against Bitar and the FT corporate entities which "handled the money" seems fairly straightforward to me. The question is, of course, what assets are they going after and how do they plan to execute a judgment?

2) What's more interesting to me is the case against Lederer et. al from Tiltware. I'm genuinely curious whether or not they can really pierce the corporate veil here and, if so, what assets they will be allowed to go after.

I honestly think their best avenue for a judgment is against the Howie crew, but I dunno if a court will be willing to go that far. This area of law is relatively new to me.