An Illinois judge recently dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the world's biggest online poker room, PokerStars, finding that the poker players never lost money directly to the website.

Kelly Sonnenberg of Illinois brought the lawsuit on behalf of "possibly millions" of Illinois players who had lost money on the PokerStars website.  According to news reports, Sonnenberg used an old statute which allowed anyone to sue a perpetrator who had defrauded someone by way of gambling. Under the Loss Recovery Act, Sonnenberg would have been able to recover three times the losses suffered by victims.

However, Chief Judge David R. Herndon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, tossed out the case, finding that players only paid rake to PokerStars and that they lost money to countless opponents at the tables. In his ruling, the judge said that PokerStars is "more akin to a third party service provider that provides a forum for others to play the game and does not have a stake in how the game is decided."

PokerStars lawyer David Deitch says that he hopes other states with similar ancient statutes will look to the outcome of this case before deciding to try ones similar in their own jurisdictions. He pointed out that it was very important to understand the “principle that a ‘rake’ does not make a company a ‘winner’.”

—Source: legalnewsonline.com