It’s an old joke:
Passenger in car: Darn! You went through a red light. Uh, oh. Here comes a cop.
Driver: What should I tell him?
Passenger: Come up with an excuse. Tell him you were drunk and didn’t notice it.
But it isn’t a joke these days:
A Kentucky man is suing Caesars Indiana, alleging that he was drunk when casino employees offered him $75,000 in credit that he quickly gambled away in a drunken blur of blackjack and craps.
Caesars officials sued Jimmy L. Vance, 64, in October for failing to repay the $75,000. Vance’s countersuit, filed last month, claims he was drunk the night he accepted the credit and then lost it gambling at the casino about 15 miles southwest of Louisville, Ky.
“They kept serving me till I was totally intoxicated. In fact, I don’t remember losing all the money,” said Vance, a developer from Corbin, Ky.He maintains he was visibly drunk the night of Sept. 22, 2004, and was “induced” by Caesars employees to take several credit advances while gambling that night.
His suit claims the casino is responsible for his losses and violated state law by serving him alcohol while he was drunk, impairing his ability to enter into a contractual agreement.
Vance’s lawyer, Larry Wilder, cited “dram-shop” laws that make taverns liable for damages if they serve an intoxicated customer who leaves the premises and harms himself or others.
So the harm here was….he accepted all that credit. MORE:
“Does Indiana, where gambling is now encouraged and permitted, have any duty to expect its gambling boats not to serve (patrons) when they become blind, running drunk?” he asked.
Vance, who says he’s lost at least $500,000 over the years at Caesars, said people might think he’s getting what he deserves by gambling while knocking back cocktails for hours on end.
But when he has had too much to drink on occasional trips to Atlantic City, he said casino bosses refused to let him continue gambling.
And, of course, what the story doesn’t mention is that casino officials wrestled him to the ground, pried his mouth open, and poured the booze down his throat. We wonder why?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.