Arelia Margarita Taveras, a former New York City lawyer is reportedly suing Atlantic City casinos for over $20 million, claiming they didn’t notice her gambling addiction. Taveras now owes $1 million for her gambling losses, but thinks the casinos were responsible. Taveras told the Associated Press:

“They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping. I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping.”

However, Paul O’Gara, an attorney in Atlantic City who specializes in gambling issues argues:

“How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn’t control themselves?”

Aren’t people who work at casinos supposed to be mind readers and if they’re not, they should be doing spot checks with interviews about their gambling state of mind?

Taveras was an attorney who represented families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Flight 587 crash. Apparently, Taveras used $100,000 of clients’ escrow money to cover her losses and was charged with grand larceny and forgery by the Queens DA’s office, was disbarred, lost her apartment and parents’ home, and now works at a call center in Minnesota. She also told the AP:

“It’s like crack, only gambling is worse than crack because it’s mental. It creeps up on you, the impulse. It’s a sickness.”

The timing of the news story is interesting because I just watched the movie Even Money last night with Danny De Vito and Kim Basinger which shows the dangers of gambling addiction. Maybe casino workers should be required to take additional training on spotting the signs of an addict. As soon as someone walks to the ATM machine to withdraw more money, they should get questioned or perhaps after a couple hours, people should get kicked out for staying too long.

Well, we’ve already seen McDonald’s sued over obesity problems so we shouldn’t be too surprised over this lawsuit. I guess we should expect drug dealers to get sued soon too.

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