Let’s begin with an ancient observation probably more academic-sounding than we might wish, but one that speaks a pragmatic truth (when considering the aggregate behavior of the commercial gambling industry and their governmental de facto partners):  “Quaeritur, ut crescunt tot magna volumina legis? In prompta causa est, crescit in orbe dolus.” [If you ask why there are so many laws, the answer is that fraud ever increases on this earth.] Lord Coke, Twyne’s Case (1601) 3 Co. Rep. 80b, 82a, 76 Eng. Rep. 809, 815-16 (K.B.).

The quote, sometimes used as an answer when folks complain of too much government intervention (via statutes and regulations) in business activity, might be seen as inapposite for a group seeking to remedy, via litigation, the wrongs of the commercial gambling + government partnership. Remember, however, victories in Predatory Gambling Liability Project-supported  litigation will also produce law:  common law, often fairer and more responsive to peoples’ needs than that generated by (as with commercial gambling in the United States) legislative and regulatory bodies “captured” by  a free-spending, influence-buying industry.

Given the systemic regulatory failures chronicled in Natasha Dow Schull’s 2012 classic book, Addiction by Design, all the more reason exists to use litigation against the culpable components of the commercial gambling/governmental partnership.  Doing so will help halt the spread (i) of ever-increasing fraud and crime, (ii) of failed public policies that necessarily increase both income inequality and disrespect for government (i.e., governments that once protected, but now help exploit, their citizens and allow the wealthy to profit from this exploitation), and (iii) of a growing and as-yet unaddressed public health crisis (evidence indicates, e.g., that gambling-driven suicides occur at far higher rates than with other addictions; and basic family health care needs often go unaddressed when needed funds are gambled away).  Provably, in an era of comparative fault, these consequences are not solely the product of irresponsible individual gambler’s choices but, rather, are the predictable, foreseeable harmful consequences of marketing strategies and game design, of misleading promises and deceptive euphemisms–in short, of today’s commercial gambling/government partnership.