Where there is smoke there is fire. And where there is fire, there is often a new bride on the losing end her negotiations with a stove. In other words, fire doesn’t spontaneously happen (unless a tinfoil hat is part of your regular wardrobe, and you believe people will occasionally burst into flames for no apparent reason). Something usually sparks the flames and starts the inferno. Sometimes the arsonist gets away, while other times they fry in their own fat. In the case of poker pro, Clonie Gowen, and her lawsuit against FullTilt, it looks like it is the Texas Hold'em temptress who is going to get burned.
Ms. Gowen claims that FullTilt offered her a 1% stake in the site in exchange for Clonie’s endorsement of the online poker room. It never happened and now she is suing for 40 million dollars. A poker player of Clonie Gowen’s skill and reputation probably didn’t sit up late one night with her lawyers, and work out a way to scam her sponsors. Chances are her lawyers would have no problem with this, but this is because most lawyers share DNA with the common weasel or most creatures that look at a sewer and call it home. Clonie can, and has, made her own millions. So there is smoke here, which means there is probably some fire behind her accusations. Unfortunately somebody along the line convinced her that whatever transgression FullTilt may be responsible was worth 40 Million dollars. That was her mistake, and the judges have been giving Clonie a judicial wedgie since she first brought this case against her former sponsor, and their parent company, and her former friends on the FullTilt poker team, and quite possibly their pets as well. In short she overreached, and the latest decision from the bench slapped the hand of the poker pro as she reached into the FullTilt cookie jar.
While her case has not been thrown out, for the second time a Judge has dismissed the charges against FullTilt, and asked Clonie to amend her complaint. Each time the Texas Hold'em player makes such an amendment, the scope of the case gets narrower, and her prospects for a big money award diminish.
While it is hard to imagine a scenario were Clonie bites a hand that once fed her, without a good reason, she may have to ask herself whether overreaching in pursuit of a punishing legal case was worth burning dozens of bridges. Can’t we just all get along?
