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Calvert v William Hill Credit Ltd [2008] EWHC 454 (Ch) (12 March 2008)

Calvert v William Hill Credit Ltd [2008] EWHC 454 (Ch) (12 March 2008)


Citation: Calvert v William Hill Credit Ltd [2008] EWHC 454 (Ch) (12 March 2008)

Link to case on WorldLII.

Rule of thumb: If a person declares themselves to be a problem gambler, is there a duty of care to ban them? Yes, bookmakers are expected to ban or restrict problem gamblers and if they don’t people may be entitled to their money back in some circumstances.

Judgment:

This case established that bookmakers do not have a legal duty at common law to exclude problem gamblers from being allowed to gamble in their shops, but if they have to follow the agreed codes in relation to ethical gambling and not followed these they can be liable for failing to do so. Whilst the pursuer successfully proved that the bookmaker had breached their duties the Court held that looking at the accounts provided, they were unable to actually demonstrate that he had actually suffered a loss – it would also have been difficult for the pursuer to prove that even if they had banned him from betting that he would not just have spent the money gambling, ‘This case raises, for the first time in an English court, the question whether there are any circumstances in which a bookmaker can incur liability in negligence in respect of the gambling losses of a customer who is, and who is known by the bookmaker to be, a problem gambler. More specifically, the question is whether a bookmaker who has, at the customer's request, undertaken to prohibit the customer from gambling for a specified period, owes the customer a duty to take reasonable care to enforce that prohibition, so as to protect the problem gambler from the risk of gambling losses during the specified period... These and other cases show that exceptional circumstances may give rise to a common law duty of care to prevent or to mitigate the consequences or aggravation of self-inflicted harm. Such circumstances may include the assumption of control over a person while vulnerable to the consequences of self-inflicted harm, or the assumption of some responsibility for the care of, or the provision of assistance to, such a person. In every such case the three stage test will be an important part of the analysis whether the circumstances are sufficiently exceptional... Standing back for a moment to look at the wood rather than the trees, it is perhaps unsurprising that a negligent failure by a bookmaker in connection with the now officially sanctioned process of self-exclusion failed to cause the problem gambler any measurable loss. The conclusion flows in my judgment naturally from the inherently limited effectiveness of self-exclusion as a remedy for the underlying problem. In the form applied under William Hill's Social Responsibility Policy, sanctioned by the ABB, the RGA and now by the Gambling Commission, the self-exclusion process is designed to operate privately as between a problem gambler and an individual bookmaker. There are no doubt powerful reasons of autonomy and privacy which prevent such a private two party arrangement being either known about, still less acted upon, by any of the individual bookmaker's competitors. Since self-exclusion is a process entered into in recognition of the likelihood that the problem gambler will in future succumb to temptation without external assistance, it seems to me inherently likely that a gambler who has self-excluded with a single bookmaker will, when the temptation to gamble returns in force, simply go elsewhere. A telephone gambling or internet account with a new bookmaker takes a few moments to establish, and there is plenty of competition for the provision for those services... The one exception lies in the extent and profit/loss consequences of the claimant's gambling at betting offices during the second half of 2006. The agreed account of those transactions which can be identified with certainty suggests an overall loss of £136,000, but a documentary summary provided by William Hill to the claimant at his own request in 2006 suggested a net profit, by reference to other transactions of which no specific documentary record now survives. It is sufficient for present purposes for me to conclude, as I do, that the claimant's gambling in William Hill's betting offices during the second half of 2006 has not been shown to have caused him a net loss. I exclude from that analysis the cash deposited in betting shops to fund his telephone betting on his Account No 3, the outcome of which is precisely documented... The self-exclusion procedure forms a main plank in the social responsibility structure which stands as the quid per quo for the modern policy of the encouragement of gambling as an industry and as a leisure activity. The question whether the limited effectiveness of self-exclusion as a remedy for problem gambling undermines the integrity of that public policy bargain is something for the Gambling Commission and Parliament rather than the courts to decide’. Briggs J(at 1, 151, 217, 219 and 220)

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Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.