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Casinos should be less liable to addicts, says prof

By Michal Tellos
News Editor
October 28, 2009

According to professor Emir Mohammed of UWindsor’s law faculty, casinos should not be as liable to problem gamblers as the law currently dictates.
The problem outlined in his essay, which will be published in “Windsor Review of Legal and Social Justices,” partially stems from the equivocal nature of the term “problem gambling.”
“I think that ‘problem gambling’ is an equivocal term. It could mean someone who simply has a ‘problem’ gambling. Or it could mean someone with an actual pathological or psychiatric condition. The spectrum of gamblers covered under the term ‘problem gambling’ is extremely broad,” said Mohammed.
Mohammed explains that though it seems easy to make a scapegoat out of casinos, this does not help the true problem gambler.
“It may seem socially or politically convenient to litigate and blame ‘gaudy’ casinos, but this does not address the problem gambler's own compulsion and ‘responsibility’ in the matter,” he said.
“Again, I emphasize that the term ‘problem gamblers’ can cover a wide spectrum of people from the student who is simply concerned about spending too much time in the casino, to the psychiatric condition of pathological gambling,” he added.
In his essay, Mohammed offers a handful of reasons as to why casinos are not actually liable to problem gamblers.
Firstly, there are no sound contractual reasons, he posits, to hold casinos liable, nor are there any sound reasons in the law of negligence, which is a branch of tort law.
Furthermore, Mohammed adds that even if there were sound reasons in contractual and tort law, there are overriding policy considerations that need to be taken into account.
Mohammed would like to see the matter dealt with by courts.
“I would like the matter to be decided by an Ontario court. To date, there have been no decisions in Ontario to specifically address the liability of casinos and the OLGC to problem gamblers, if any,” he said.
“Naturally, I would like to see a court decide that problem gamblers cannot sue casinos and the OLGC to recover their financial losses,” he added.