Ropes & Gray, one of Boston's most distinguished old-line law firms, wants to make it perfectly clear that partner Diane Patrick, wife of Governor Slots, has absolutely nothing to do with the firm's lucrative gambling practice serving some of the industry's biggest players.
That is a good thing, indeed, considering that Ropes has built itself into a law firm of choice for an industry that is lusting to move in on Massachusetts. The Ropes website is not shy about touting its expertise:
"Gaming trade associations, leading companies and principal investors turn to Ropes & Gray for advice on matters ranging from litigation and regulatory issues, to financing and transactional engagements, to internal investigations and out-of-court workouts and insolvencies. We work with participants in all portions of the industry, including commercial casino companies, tribal operations and technology suppliers."
"Recent engagements" included: defending against lawsuits brought by "allegedly compulsive gamblers" and defending a casino company against charges of improper campaign donations. "Ropes & Gray is the only national law firm that is a member of the American Gaming Association."
This is a 143-year-old firm that takes appropriate pride in its long history of public service, rooted in the tradition of its founders, John Codman Ropes and John Chipman Gray. Its many pro bono clients have included those seeking political asylum, the homeless, and death row inmates.
And then there is Ropes's work defending Harrah's and other casino companies against those "alleged compulsive gamblers." Boasts David Stewart, the Washington-based partner who heads Ropes's gambling practice: "We have never lost one." That is what the cigarette companies used to say, too, once upon a time. Stewart has made a cottage industry of beating little guys like Johnnie Brown and Milan Stulajter, just to name two.
Take Stulajter. According to court documents, the Indiana man admitted he was a problem gambler and filed with Harrah's a "permanent self-exclusion request and release," barring him from all Harrah's casinos. (Tell me another industry where the customers sign a legal document asking they be permanently prohibited from buying the product.) Not long afterward, Harrah's started sending him marketing materials touting its casino, and sure enough Stulajter began playing again, losing $70,000.
Johnnie Brown wasn't a compulsive gambler; she says her husband was. She sued Argosy Casino, saying her husband, a former General Electric executive, had gambled away their life savings. In her suit, she asked that her husband be barred from the casino, saying he had turned into a stranger since going to the riverboats. "Nobody realizes what I'm going through," she told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "It has made my husband a whole different person."
Stewart and the casinos won both cases. The courts ruled that people are responsible for their own conduct.
The casinos, however, didn't skate in the case of Murray Armstrong, a sleazy small-town Arkansas lawyer who went to jail for running a Ponzi scheme. At the heart of Armstrong's problems, says Thomas S. Streetman, another small-town lawyer who sued Harrah's and others in the bankruptcy case that followed, was a fierce gambling addiction. "He would lose $175,000 and go home and steal $175,000," Streetman says.
Streetman says Armstrong loved the craps tables and spent nearly every weekend in the casinos in Tunica, Miss., a mini-Vegas in a cotton field. At a Harrah's casino in Shreveport, La., an employee noted Armstrong's rising credit line, documents show. "We appear to have Mr. Armstrong in over his head," he noted in Armstrong's credit file. "I strongly suggest no more increases." Two days later, Harrah's gave him another $126,000 in markers.
Harrah's was ordered to return $400,000; other casinos paid, too. "I am deadly opposed to casinos. I have seen what it can do to people," says Streetman, who at 70 continues to practice law in tiny Crossett, Ark. Harrah's, by the way, was not represented by Ropes & Gray in the Armstrong mess, but by local counsel.
Ropes says it is not involved in the push for casino gambling in Massachusetts. And it is prudent that Diane Patrick has distanced herself from the firm's gambling practice. But if her husband gets his way, her partners will soon have a lot more business. And so much closer to home.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com.
