The Costs of Addicted Gamblers: Should the States Initiate Mega-Lawsuits Similar to the Tobacco Cases?

Kindt, John Warren

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/16275 Copy

Description

Title

The Costs of Addicted Gamblers: Should the States Initiate Mega-Lawsuits Similar to the Tobacco Cases?

Author(s)

Kindt, John Warren

Issue Date

2001-01

Keyword(s)

• Gambling
• United States
• Liability
• Litigation
• Tobacco

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, the trend in the US was to hold corporations liable for the harm their products caused the general public. Asbestos, lead, and particularly tobacco, were the leading products that raised liability issues. As potentially harmful gambling activities were legalized throughout the 19808 and 19908, a 1992 Harris Poll indicated that the proliferation of legalized gambling failed to raise concern among a majority of the American public. However, by the mid-I990s, the public's awareness, coupled with US Congressional concerns had increased, and eventually culminated in the 1996 National Gambling Impact Study Commission Act,14 which was enacted into law on 3 August 1996. This statute established the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which charged nine commissioners with producing a report within 2 years. ... This analysis will compare the gambling industry to the tobacco industry. It predicts that in the future the gambling industry will be held financially liable by the states for the social and economic impact gambling has on US society. Furthermore, this analysis concludes that the gambling industry will be vulnerable to state-initiated mega-lawsuits -- even without specific costs being delimited either for individual 'pathological gamblers' or for individual 'problem gamblers'. Thus, definitional debates and academic debates regarding socio-economic costs may be largely irrelevant with regard to the states' mega-lawsuits because the gambling industry's lobbyists at the American Gaming Association (AGA) acting on behalf of the gambling industry, and individual gambling companies have acknowledged that the industry has created new pathological and problem gamblers during the 1990s.

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/16275

Copyright and License Information

Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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