Gambler suffers one more loss

Mar 13 2008 by The Journal

A COMPULSIVE gambler who lost more than £2m has now lost his High Court claim for compensation and damages from bookmaker William Hill.

Mr Justice Briggs ruled that the bookies had a duty to take reasonable care to exclude Graham Calvert, 28, from telephone gambling after he asked them to stop taking his money.

But he said that although William Hill had failed to take reasonable steps to implement its own self-exclusion policy, pathological gambling would still probably have led to his financial ruin, but over a longer time.

Mr Justice Briggs said: “William Hill’s failure to take reasonable care to exclude him from telephone gambling ... did not therefore cause Mr Calvert any measurable financial or other loss.” He dismissed his claim. Mr Calvert sued William Hill after he said he had lost not only money but also his wife, health and livelihood.

Anneliese Day, who represented the greyhound trainer at the High Court in London, told the judge at a hearing last month that William Hill should be held liable because it had failed to operate its own policy.

She said Mr Calvert, of Sedgletch Farm, Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, was hoping to establish in law for the first time that bookies do owe a duty of care.

She said the scale of her client’s gambling was “staggering“ in periods of mania, when he placed huge multiple bets in a few hours. He lost £347,000 in one bet alone when he backed the US to win the 2006 Ryder Cup.

Miss Day said her client, who ended up borrowing to fund his habit, was an accomplished greyhound trainer who ran the family business from a farm in County Durham. He was once comfortably well-off and had been gambling most of his life.

“The claimant’s descent from betting being a hobby to betting being a disorder appears to have commenced when he began betting by telephone.” Mr Calvert, who was not in court yesterday, was granted permission to go to the Court of Appeal.

Mr Justice Briggs said Mr Calvert had told him he had had a “moment of clarity” when he realised he had a problem and knew he would return to gamble excessively when prudence, family responsibility and self-preservation would be forgotten.

He had asked to be in William Hill’s self-exclusion policy.

“The essential purpose of a self-exclusion policy is to enable the problem gambler to take advantage of his moment of clarity by seeking his bookmaker’s assistance so that restraint will be available when his own resources of self-control later fail.”

The judge said by 2000, Mr Calvert had become a skilful and successful gambler – his net winnings averaging £50,000 a year for the next five years. Mr Calvert agreed on a self-exclusion deal with William Hill, but a few months later, in August 2006, opened a new telephone betting account. For eight days, almost every bet lost, with stakes of £2,000 to £70,000.

His bank account was reduced from £400,000 in July to £12,000 by August 17, £10,000 of which he lost on another bet. Mr Calvert said he then began borrowing from friends, betting an aggregate of £578,900 on September 15. On September 20 he lost £120,000. Next day he staked £523,333, and lost most of it.

The judge said: “I can see no particular reason why it should be regarded as unfair that a bookmaker who has undertaken, albeit without consideration, to exclude a problem gambler customer at his request, without making any disclaimer of liability, should incur a duty of care.”

He said the bookie’s failure to implement the self-exclusion arrangement was careless.