Paying Our Debts
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED APRIL 25, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Court says gambler must pay his debts
Ah, the good old days, when a man's word -- or even a government's -- was his bond.
As little as 70 years ago, banks in this country printed paper money promising to "pay to the bearer on demand" a fixed weight of gold or silver "dollars" as defined in weight of metal by the U.S. Congress. (That's even the way the Constitution says it should be done.)
Many a sizeable deal was closed on a handshake, and everyone understood a "check" need not be printed on any special paper or imprinted with fancy digital coding. Write an "IOU" on a piece of birch bark and the recipient could literally "take it to the bank."
Why did this work? Because no one violating such rules of behavior would ever be invited back for dinner, of course. They would be shunned.
How times have changed. Today's federal reserve notes, of course, aren't convertible into (or even backed by) any specific quantities of gold or silver -- helping to explain why they've lost more than 90 percent of their buying power.
And -- following the federal government's miserable example -- too many private citizens now lamentably assume the same relaxed rules should apply to them. Thus, the abuse of our merchants by less-than-honorable customers has reached the point where passing a check can involve the kind of examination which used to be required only for induction into the U.S. Army -- with a top-secret clearance.
Turn your head and cough.
But surely, even today, everyone still understands a man who doesn't honor his marker can no longer hold up his head in polite society ... right?
Enter Matthew Fleeger, a deadbeat Dallas gambler who by April, 1998 had sprinkled Las Vegas with at least $184,000 in unpaid markers. Last November, not only did Fleeger refuse to pay -- he actually brought suit against the Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino and prosecutors from Clark and Douglas counties for trying to collect those debts.
Fleeger argued his markers weren't negotiable checks or drafts. Thus, he alleged Clark County District Attorney Stewart Bell had illegally filed criminal complaints to prosecute civil debts; unlawfully issued and circulated arrest warrants in Nevada and other states; and violated Fleeger's rights to due process.
"If a marker is a debt, it can't be a check," Fleeger's attorneys protested this week. "Because a check is a payment like cash, you're not creating debt."
In other words, the casino is free to keep such markers -- framing them on the wall if they like -- but they shouldn't expect to be able to convert them into, you know, greenbacks. At least not until Mr. Fleeger tells them he feels like paying ... if ever.
Fortunately, U.S. District Judge Philip Pro has now found against Mr. Fleeger.
"This court finds the disputed casino markers to be negotiable 'checks' " under Nevada law, Judge Pro wrote on April 12. Why? Because they "specifically state that the payor empowers Caesars Palace to fill in the amount, name, account number and address of any financial institution in which the payor holds funds. ... The markers also do not delineate any explicit dates for repayment, thereby subjecting the payor to a repayment obligation at the will of the payee."
Fleeger's claim that Caesars Palace violated false imprisonment and false arrest laws when the casino caused him to be arrested and jailed in Texas for nonpayment of casino markers is thus invalid, Judge Pro ruled, since such a remedy is "within the legal bounds of Nevada's bad check statute," as amended in 1983 to bolster the state's casino credit collection rate, which had been falling in the early '80s.
In short, Mr. Fleeger, a presumably responsible adult, now finds himself held responsible by the court to pay attention to what he's signing.
How refreshing.
Yes, it would be nice if casinos could still accept less formal markers -- and count on them to be paid on demand. But surely that decision is up to the casinos. No one chained Mr. Fleeger to the tables. He was presumably always free to tell the pit boss, "You know, I'm busted. Comp me to a bus ticket home, will you?"
Greyhound hasn't taken to charging $184,000 one-way to Dallas, has it?
The deadbeat's Los Angeles attorney has filed similar lawsuits in California on behalf of other "gamblers" seeking class action status, but the proposed "class" has not been certified. Thus, Judge Pro ruled only on Fleeger's suit against Caesars Palace. Fleeger's attorneys vow to appeal.
What a bunch of weasels.
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at $24.95 postpaid by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
