Joseph Stiers Lawsuit Against WSOP and Caesars Dismissed with Prejudice
The lawsuit filed by Maryland gambler and poker player Joseph Conor Stiers against the parent entities of the World Series of Poker (WSOP), Caesars Entertainment Corporation, CEOC, LLC and Caesars Interactive Entertainment, LLC has reached its formal legal conclusion with the filing and court approval of a settlement between the two sides. In a court filing dated March 12, 2019 in the US District Court for the District of Nevada, presiding judge Richard F. Boulware II approved a Stipulation and Order of Dismissal With Prejudice, thus ending Stiers’ claims against the Caesars entities and the WSOP.
The nearing of a settlement between the two sides was first submitted to the court in a separate stipulation in the case filed last month, which resolved as expected following a brief delay as the two sides finalized the terms of the dismissal of Stiers’ claims. The March 12 date had previously been set as a deadline by Judge Boulware to present the terms of the settlement to the court.
The dismissal with prejudice means that Stiers (shown at right) cannot re-file a claim against Caesars over the allegations that Stiers made regarding his eviction from the 2017 World Series of Poker Main Event. Stiers had entered that 2017 WSOP Main Event using an ID with a somewhat munged version of his name. This activity by Stiers occurred after he had received a ban from all Caesars-owned properties, after being repeatedly trespassed from Horseshoe Casino Baltimore in a situation that originated with Stiers’ card-counting blackjack activities and escalated significantly from there.
Stiers alleged hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages over his eviction from the Rio, though whether he received anything at all in the official “settlement” remains unpublicized. His claim included his personal valuation of $150,000 for his Main Event chip stack at the time of his forced removal from the event. Given that he was bounced from the Brasilia Room well before the Main Event reached the money, Stiers’ conjecture regarding his expected profit may well have been unenforceable as a legal matter.
What is known from the approved settlement is that both Stiers and Caesars are responsible for their own legal costs; if anything, that may be an indication that Caesars paid little or nothing to Stiers, who remained unapologetic in numerous court filings for his willingness to ignore the Caesars-wide ban. Stiers’ tourney chips were removed from play once his identity had been confirmed, and his $10,000 buy-in for the Main Event was not refunded, per the WSOP’s terms of entry. Whether that $10,000 buy-in was eventually refunded as part of the settlement is also publicly unknown.
Stiers claimed in one early filing that being evicted from Caesars properties negatively impacted his professional-poker profitability, and he insinuated that he was thus entitled to keep visiting the properties and entering events such as the WSOP despite being banned.
Stiers, a law student when not pursuing various gambling opportunities, represented himself in the case, thus limiting his financial exposure to some extent.
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