OA32: Phil Ivey's Gambling Winnings (with guest Chris Kristofco)

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:01:16 Thomas: Sorry. Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments! This is Episode 32, our second for the week. I'm still so excited about that. How are you doing, Andrew?

0:01:24 Andrew: I'm great. I am equally excited. I love the fact that we're doing this twice a week. This is going to enable us to really do some more deep dives, to do interviews like we are doing in this episode. I'm really excited about it.

0:01:38 Thomas: Absolutely. I was going to mention, look forward to, our second guest, I guess, Chris Kristofco. Later in the episode, we're talked about a really fascinating case involving Phil Ivey made a lot of money off a casino or two, and there's some question about whether he'll have to pay it back because the way he made it is a little interesting. So look forward to that later. But for now, let's get to our first listener question. What do you think?

0:02:07 Andrew: Sounds good. Let's do it.

0:02:08 Clip: He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. What?

0:02:16 Thomas: Adrian Thurin asks, how come it is legal or so it seems not waiters minimum wage? And if so, how come other industries wage don't too? And I think this is referencing the fact that a lot of waiters don't get paid minimum wage, but their tips make up for it. And so that's interesting. Yeah, how does that work?

0:02:38 Andrew: Yeah. And it turns out there's a really straightforward answer to this question, which is the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which we have mentioned on the show several times in the past, governs the payment of a minimum wage. It also governs the payment of overtime. This is an area that is a huge, a huge growth area for plaintiffs lawsuits right now. And I want to talk about that a little bit. This is part of why I took, I took the question because I think there are a lot of interesting FLSA questions right now in the law, but that statute defines from a federal perspective, what the minimum wage is and what the maximum work week is. And that statute has an exception for for commonly tipped employees.

0:03:26 Andrew: There are then requirements for how the tips are calculated and everything else. But the crucial part is there is not a requirement in the statute that your tips plus your hourly salary have to equal the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. It's about to go up. Me not say that. It seemed as though it was about to go up. We have an incoming president who believes that wages are too high. So maybe it isn't.

0:03:57 Thomas: Yeah. But you just said it's not required to add up to minimum? Them.

0:04:02 Andrew: Yeah, it's not required to add up to 725. is just an exception in the law for waitstaff. And so the reason why other employers can't get away with that is because they don't have the exception. The law governs businesses of a certain size that do at least $500,000 in revenue per year. And then, you know, they're required to obey the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. There are a couple of important points here that I want to touch on. The first, as we've discussed before, whenever you have a federal law that sets forth minimum standards here, employment standards, but we've talked about this in the discrimination context, states can add to that but not fall below that standard. Right. So there you have seen states and localities that have passed minimum wage statutes that go beyond the federal minimum wage.

0:04:08 Thomas: Really? I

0:04:58 Andrew: Right. Like, so New York City, for example, I think were considering fifteen dollars an hour. And New York City is one of the places that I think could support a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage. Of, I'm not sure if that passed. I know that the, I believe ten dollars and ten cents an hour passed in in New York City and I think in Oregon as well. And then, and other states, I'm just not an expert on, you know, every every state's minimum wage law. But so the states can, they can supplement the federal statute with with laws that that drive the minimum wage upwards. And so a state is certainly free to specify additional requirements on waitstaff. So if that was perceived as a problem that people – because waitstaf typically make $2 or $3 an hour and then the tips on top of that.

0:05:53 Andrew: But, you know, you can certainly imagine in, you know, oh, yeah.

0:05:58 Thomas: I'm wondering if in California there is some sort of state law, because that's not the case in for me, or anyone. I, I worked in a couple restaurants and, uh, everyone I know that's not been the case. Now, who knows, maybe if in LA it's different or something, I don't think it is, but but maybe there's some Californian law, which I think is what you're alluding to now, that where they could, they could require that not happen. Uh, okay, interesting, yeah.

0:06:14 Andrew: Yeah.

0:06:24 Andrew: And let me let me be clear to what I am saying yes to. There could be a California law that that imposes additional requirements that says you have to pay your waitstaff minimum wage. If you're saying that that in your experience, waitstaf do typically get paid seven twenty five an hour or more in California. I don't know whether there is, but that would be the most likely reason is that.

0:06:47 Thomas: No, they definitely I definitely got paid more than – and I think it would be our state minimum wage too, because I don't think we got paid lower than our state minimum wage in any – I've had two or three restaurant jobs and I've known a lot of people who have. So there must be something like that. Interesting.

0:06:48 Andrew: Yeah. OK. Yeah, I have never had a restaurant job. So I you

0:07:07 Thomas: Well, okay, Mr. Privilege over here, never having had to serve – wait, wait, hold on.

0:07:10 Andrew: Know, that's I'm I'm checking. Not even not

0:07:13 Thomas: So you're saying when you were fielding a bunch of interviews from powerful firms trying to recruit you into their, uh, you know, death cult firm, you weren't, there wasn't a time where you had to stop, take, take a lunch break from your restaurant job and, and talk to, yeah,

0:07:13 Andrew: Even Mickey D's. Yeah.

0:07:26 Andrew: So, So, but, but, but, just to keep my, um, you, on the edge of poverty cred intact, uh, in, I, I worked, you know, summers in in college, uh, and and before law school, but, um, this, I, I graduated high school in 1990, um, and uh, I happen to be, uh, a really, I mean, this, these are not skills now because everybody is a good typist and is familiar with Microsoft Word. But at the time, that was not a skill set that a lot of people had. So I could type quickly and I knew the, which was called WordPerfect, which yeah, see, there you go. And it had all these like crazy embedded codes. And it was before really there was, yeah, yeah.

0:08:06 Thomas: I remember word perfect. Yeah. I remember my grandfather using word per, no, my

0:08:15 Andrew: It was before, you know, you had, you know, what you see is what you get on the screen, you know, so there were these DOS commands. So I, I worked, I did a lot of secretarial and kind of office temp work over the summers, which, which paid a little better than McDonald's. Not a lot, but, you know, paid a little better.

0:08:33 Thomas: Favorite is you'll still occasionally on resumes, see people saying like they're good with email. It's like, yeah, okay, you better be good with email. That's getting past the point where you don't want to include that anymore. Just a little tip. Hey, take resume advice from this podcast. Don't bother with saying you're capable of emailing. That should be assumed if you're applying to an office job that you can do that. So there you go.

0:08:39 Andrew: Yeah, right. Yes. Well, And, and you know, I mean, I, I was just sort of going through in my head it, I worked for a temp agency one summer, I was sort of the the intake coordinator, and our, and big thing was administering tests to measure how quickly people would type, right, because that, that was a huge difference in, you know, sort of secretarial skills at the time. And I think that's, again, I think that's another thing that's sort of gone on the way, you know, the way of word perfect today, that, like, it's just kind of assumed if you're applying for an office job that, uh, you know, you can probably type, you know, 60 or 70 words per minute, which, you it seems like everybody under the age of 30 can can type 65 words per minute, uh, or better now anyway, so, um, but that was a big, right, yeah, oh, I'm not gonna, like, rail against the kids these days with their emojis, so that's that that goes

0:09:25 Thomas: Yeah, but it's all with emojis and stuff, right? You're allowed to do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was trying to bait you into doing an old man Andrew Torrez bit

0:09:53 Andrew: Yeah, that that, yeah, that runs against the hip young image I'm trying to, uh, to portray in this podcast right, so, um, no, back, back to the question could be state exceptions. Um, I also want to talk about the FLSA because, uh, there is a pending, uh, injunction, uh, against the the provisions of the FLSA that were set to take effect on November 1st, um, for exempt employees. So, so basically, um. The FLSA mandates a minimum wage. It also mandates a 40 hour work week and specifies that unless you fall into exempt categories, uh, you have to be paid time and a half for your overtime hours, and your employer has to track those hours. Um, one of the reasons that this is really a growth area for plaintiff's lawyers, we've talked about the incentives on this in the past, the FLSA allows plaintiffs to recover double their actual damages, so they get statutory damages for their back pay, right?

0:10:01 Thomas: To cultivate, yeah, uh, that's good, so, but, but, okay, so, back to the question, though, there could be state exceptions, yeah,

0:10:59 Andrew: So you are not paid for 100 hours of overtime work, which at time and a half is $20 an hour, right? So that's, you're owed $2,000.

0:11:12 Andrew: You would then recover $4,000 at trial plus all of your attorney's fees incurred in bringing the case, right. And so all of a sudden now it's worth it to spend $50,000 in attorney's fees to get your $4,000 because you would get $54,000. So you can imagine how that situation where knowing that if you're going to trial and the plaintiff gets a dollar at trial, that they're going essentially get potentially $125,001. It's not hard to imagine racking up a six-figure legal bill in getting to trial.

0:11:57 Andrew: So puts tremendous pressure on employers to settle those cases early, because every time the plaintiff does more work, their demands go up. And I've been on both sides of these cases. And it's an interesting legal situation right now. There's a reason why plaintiff's lawyers for wage and hour lawsuits advertise during Monday night football out here. I don't know if they advertise in California as well, we but see them all the time on really high visibility, high dollar ads. And that's because of those provisions in the law. So may think to yourself, though, but Andrew, like you talked about being a lawyer and working 100 hour weeks. And I don't seem to recall like lawyers don't get paid overtime. Right. And that's true because there are exceptions to the FLSA for certain classes of what are called exempt employees. And I don't know if you were exempt when you were working

0:12:23 Thomas: I'm

0:12:57 Andrew: For the government. Yeah.

0:12:58 Thomas: I can officially talk in the past tense about my job, I was exempt back in the day, I'm also currently exempt on opening arguments, I don't and Andrew's not paying me overtime, so no, I'm just kidding, yeah, yeah, yeah, so

0:13:05 Andrew: Yeah, yeah, we are. I don't know that we're at minimum wage for opening arguments, but don't take legal advice from our financial situation. So you got classified as exempt because you met a certain salary threshold, and you had independent duties that allowed you to be classified as as exempt. And there are executive, professional, and then there's, it's called an administrative exception, which carries a different connotation. But, again, of those exceptions have two components to it. You have a minimum salary component, and then you have aspects of the job that involve, you know, discretion and independent decision making and all that sort of stuff. And the big change to the FLSA that this injunction is blocked, that is going to be lifted at some point, like the law is going to go through, increases the salary exception to, I believe, $47,476.

0:14:12 Andrew: I have to check the 476, but basically to $47,000, which, you know, we have listeners in New York. $47,000 is a poverty wage in New York City. But across the country. Right. There's certainly a lot of rural areas where, you know, that's a really, really significant salary. So I know a lot of employers have exempt employees that are making less than $47,000. And heading forward, would just say this, you know, don't take legal advice from a podcast, but if you've got a business and you you have employees and you haven't talked to your lawyer in 2016, give your lawyer a call. I proactively called all of my clients that I knew had employees and, you know, sort of gave them a little lecture overview that's similar to what I'm doing now. Lot of folks are going to get caught sort of flat footed if they haven't done that.

0:15:08 Thomas: Why do you say that it is going to happen? Because I felt like there was some resistance to this, right, and it's, and and it was blocked, but you seem to be very confident that that will eventually be okay,

0:15:17 Andrew: Yeah. Well, because, yeah, Yeah, because there a judge in, it's a district court judge, a U.S. district court judge in I think the Western District of Texas has enjoined the passage of that amendment. But the law was amended, right? It will go into effect. And I don't think the arguments against it, which, you know, we don't really have time to sort of parse them out, are particularly strong. And I know we've talked about before how it is, but remember that it's a balancing test, right? And so it certainly is the case that joining the statute from going into effect, right, that meets the test of irreparable harm, right. Right. Like if the law goes into effect and, you millions of businesses have to comply with the increased salary requirements, that it's really it's going to be really, really difficult to put that genie

0:15:44 Thomas: Yeah, but isn't injunctive relief hard to get, isn't it hard to get an injunction, isn't that a high burden, okay,

0:16:20 Andrew: Back in the bottle. Right. So I'm not.

0:16:21 Thomas: So because it's relatively speaking, pretty easy to just keep going on the status quo, there's not some gigantic burden to stopping this law, okay, that makes sense,

0:16:26 Andrew: Right. Until. Right, right. Now, I don't know how the plaintiffs won in Texas on the substantial likelihood of success on the merits, other than to surmise that it's a pro business judge in Texas. But, but I don't, I mean, that's, that's where I would sort of part company. And I note that there were other lawsuits, you brought in other jurisdictions. So I think there was some forum shopping to go on to sort of find the judge that was going to be most favorable to this. Our theme, as we will hear in a few minutes, I know I want to ask Chris this about his prior predictions. So, you know, we try and be accountable. And that's a prediction that I'm comfortable making. And if I'm wrong about it, we'll certainly revisit it and try and figure out why I'm right, wrong. Um, but, uh,

0:16:47 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely, talk

0:17:24 Andrew: But I think those, I think there's requirements are going to end up in place. And I would say, if you are a business and you have exempt employees who are not making $47,000 a year, uh. Again, talk, to your lawyer, start making plans and making plans to, to track your, your hour. Absolutely. Um. But I mean, this is the bread and butter of what I do. So that's that's certainly.

0:17:33 Thomas: To your lawyer, start making arrangements, or hire Andrew, nice, all right, well, thanks for the question, yeah, I know you branched off a bit, but, but it was related to that, and that's, uh, thanks for taking us through that.

0:17:56 Thomas: Joining us right now, back from all the way back in OA6, is Chris Kristofco. How are you doing, Chris?

0:18:02 Chris: I'm doing great, thanks for having me guys.

0:18:04 Thomas: Hey, thanks for coming on again. Before we get to what we wanted to talk about today, what about a short recap of predictions from OA6 on the NFL, the pending NFL apocalypse, and where that went?

0:18:42 Thomas: Right.

0:18:45 Chris: Some guy who later recanted, so I said, um, in my infinite wisdom that this would be the final straw, the players would refuse to submit to the interviews, they would say, no, we don't have to, this is ridiculous, your power has gotten out of control, Roger Goodell, they would, they would stand as one, they would fight, and this would be huge labor strife. Well, about 48 hours after the episode, so they rolled over, they interviewed, and everything blew over.

0:19:11 Thomas: What do you think went wrong? What went wrong in the accountability? See, I I refrain from making predictions so that I don't have to be, you know, in the hot seat. But but yeah,

0:19:21 Andrew: And I just make sure I'm always right, so.

0:19:23 Chris: But I think

0:19:25 Thomas: So you should do one of those two things next time, Chris.

0:19:28 Chris: – I will work on that. Yeah, I think there was a bit of a wink and a nudge on this. I think the NFL – because they kind of sent the message in the media. They said, look, all you got to do is sit down for the interviews and then everything will be taken care of. So I think they said, look, there's not much going on here. Just sit down for the interviews. Then we get our discipline. You know, you get to play and everything's all good. That's what I think happened. I thought the players would be a little more principled and say no, but I was wrong.

0:19:59 Thomas: Yeah, well, there you go.

0:20:00 Andrew: So, do you think the fundamental dynamic is still in place that, you know, that you described?

0:20:05 Chris: Oh, yeah, I think we're building to a big, contentious CBA negotiation next time because there's a lot out there the players are not happy with. And there's lot out out there that the owners want from the players. So I think for both of those reasons, it is going to be a contentious negotiation next time. Whether or not this was the apocalypse I had predicted, there will be, and discipline will be at the forefront of that negotiation.

0:20:32 Andrew: All right. Well, doubling down on predictions, so I like that. And like any good apocalypticist, you can always move the date of the apocalypse forward forward uh when it when it doesn't quite happen so yeah no

0:20:42 Thomas: Yeah. So you reconfigured the numerology you're using,

0:20:45 Chris: Yeah, I kind of did that, didn't I? The NFL rapture will not take place for another couple years now, I'm sure.

0:20:45 Thomas: Right? Right.

0:20:49 Andrew: Thank you very much

0:20:54 Thomas: Well, Chris, in addition to being a another a second real lawyer on the show and lead editor at Titletown SoundOff, as listeners may recall, who are listening back on OA6, I find out from Andrew, you also were a dealer at a casino at one time.

0:21:11 Chris: I was. I, um, so when, when I decided that the practice of law was not for me, I needed something else to do. So I did what most former lawyers do. And I became a casino dealer. I actually, I still work in the gaming industry. I'm just not on the casino floor any longer, but, uh, yeah, I was a, I was a dealer for about five years and a, and a supervisor as well.

0:21:29 Thomas: Well, the reason that's relevant is because we were going to have you on to talk about this really fascinating case. I think a couple of our listeners sent it to us. Phil Ivey ordered to return, I'm looking at a headline here, ordered to return $10 million in winnings to a casino. I guess, do you want to set it up, take us through it?

0:21:45 Chris: Sure. So, uh, Phil Ivey is a noted poker professional. He's won millions, both online, um, live poker in cash games and tournaments, very well known, very high profile, and he decided he was going to play a game called baccarat. Now, any of the stories that you'll read about this lawsuit will describe baccarato in the simplest of terms, it, and it's a pretty simple game, uh, the player chooses either bank or player, and those words mean nothing. The player could, it could just as well be red or black or, you know, purple or green. It doesn't matter. The player chooses one of those sides. Whichever side gets closest to nine, if it's the player's, whatever the player chooses, if it's their side, they win. Now there are some complicated rules for determining when cards are drawn and how it's done, but Baccarat is one of the best games in the house for the player.

0:22:38 Chris: It's a very small edge, and it is one of the most popular games. In fact, in Asian casinos, if you were in, for instance, Macau, Macau, uh, you walk into an American casino, you're going to see, you know, blackjack tables as far as the eye can see. If you were in Macau you would see Baccarat tables as far as the, I can see it's that's how popular it is. So that was, uh you know that that's what Ivy was going to play and he sits down with a very small casino edge. Uh, but he brings a friend with him and there are differing accounts on how, what he said to get this friend in there. But he basically told, told the casino that it was, she was basically a good luck charm that he wanted her there for that purpose. And, um, he had some rules that he wanted the casino to play by. I don't want to get good.

0:23:20 Andrew: Yeah can if I Can, yeah, if I could just cut in for a second, every story that I've, and I have never played, uh, you seem to be pronouncing it in a, in like a French accent, I always called it "backer at," but um, uh, I've never played it, uh, but all of the stories that I've read, uh, say that it's common for high rollers to do, you know, to have sort of wacky requests, yeah, yeah, Is that true? Well,

0:23:40 Thomas: Yeah, I have weird requests. I've seen that too, yeah.

0:23:43 Chris: Sure. Yeah. Well, there are weird requests and then there are weird requests. So weird requests might be a player wants to be able to eat a turkey dinner at the table, and a player who's playing enough, you know, if, if a regular $25 player wanted a candy bar at the stable, they, they'd be told to stand up, but you know, the high roller is going to get to eat what he wants at the table, do what he wants. And, and there will, they will make some concessions, and I don't want to get too far into it yet, but some of the concessations that were made that blow my mind, because they seem really obviously at the least questionable, what, what Ivy wanted, was first of all, he demanded a, an automatic shuffler. Now, this is really strange because a lot of players believe that those shuffle machines are A, rigged, B, bad luck, or C, they just don't like them.

0:24:33 Chris: You hear it all the time from players. And Baccarat, by the way, is a very superstitious game. The players tend to be very superstitious. He requested a specific type of playing card, and this was at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. He request purple Gemico Borgata playing cards, which they use frequently, but he, he specifically requested the purple deck, and he requested a, a dealer that spoke Mandarin Chinese, so I don't know if you remember any other requests that he made, but those were the three major ones that, that seemed to stick out for me.

0:25:03 Thomas: Well, and to have the person with him, right?

0:25:03 Chris: Right Right, to have, yeah, to have his, his quote unquote good luck charm by his side.

0:25:10 Andrew: And then what stood out to me that I, I just couldn't figure out how you would make this request with a straight face to the casino, was that as the cards were in play, his friend would instruct the dealer to turn them 180 degrees. Right. And you can explain that maybe better than I can. But I mean, just to me, from, I, it's hard for me to imagine how you cast that as a superstition. Right? Like, I mean, that's, that's sort of like on the level of, I've got a magic trick. Now, I just want you to turn your, you know, turn around for a minute. Right. Like,

0:25:10 Chris: Yeah, yeah I

0:25:46 Andrew: I mean, isn't that a giant flag of the only reason somebody wants to turn a card is because you believe that card is marked in some way?

0:25:50 Chris: Mean so so that's where we should probably explain what Ivy was doing. What he was doing is called edge sorting. So if you take a look at the Borgata playing card, and I don't know if you're able to link a picture of that, the Brogata playing card, Great, the Borgata playing card that they use is very similar to a lot of playing cards you'll see in casinos. It kind of has like a design on the back, it's not just plain, and that design has, you know, what I guess looks like diamonds kind of on the bank of the playing card, and what happens is the cards sometimes aren't cut perfectly.

So on the back of this Borgata card, it's actually little circles, but they kind of make a diamond shape if you look at it from afar. And sometimes the cards aren't caught perfectly, so one edge can be slightly different than the other. So it's a very small difference, and to the average player who's playing blackjack, they wouldn't notice, they wouldn't care, it would have no impact on them. However, if you can somehow control the way those cards are put in play and the way that they're put in the shuffler and theway that they

0:25:58 Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we'll link that.

0:26:55 Chris: Are put in the shoe, then suddenly you can use that very subtle difference, if you're perceptive, to mark the cards without ever actually marking the cards. So that's what they were doing, they were creating, they were taking those cards that were of high value. So remember, I told you, eights and nines in Baccarat are natural winning hands, so they would take those high value cards and they, they would sort them by asking the dealer to turn them, like you said, 180 degrees. Now, they painted this as their superstition, but what they were really doing is making sure that that edge that would show was different for those high value cards. So they would know what was coming out of the shoe next. So why do they ask for a shuffle machine? Because when you use a shuffle engine, as opposed to a human shuffle, the cards never spin.

0:27:45 Chris: They always remain in the same direction. The shuffle machine just is a giant sorter, and it just sorts them together and threads them together, and it'll create a random shuffle, but it'll never spin those cards around. If you watch a dealer do a hand shuffle in a casino, in casinos with better security, they will separate those cards and they'll spin one side of that deck. And the only reason you do that is to avoid that edge sort, so that it's more random and the player can't use that to their advantage. So Ivy wanted the cards, go ahead sure

0:28:17 Andrew: Well, and let me ask on that. With a human shuffling, aren't you still going to get those eights and nines sorted to the outside, right, 50% of the time, right? Right. In other words, sorry, I guess my question is, would it have been possible for Ivy to run this scam without asking for the cards to be rotated 180 degrees? Could he have just taken advantage of the card of the thickness on the card variation and just noted when some eights and nines, he would miss 50 percent of them, but he would still have inside knowledge on the other 50 percent.

0:28:30 Chris: Well no because he well no so you ask a good question it's actually what essentially all of the cards have the same markings on the back it's It's just that so the the quote-unquote right side of the card has a different edge than the left side ofthe card, so what he's doing is as he's going, he's sorting all those high value cards every time, so that eventually when he goes through that deck maybe it's two or three shoes four or five shoes in, now every single high value card is sorted. So he knows what's in the window on that shoe.

0:29:01 Andrew: Oh, I see.

0:29:14 Andrew: Gotcha.

0:29:25 Andrew: Gotcha. So basically, it is, and I've seen this described as one 32nd of an inch, but essentially, it's that the graphic on the back is not perfectly centered, right, for every single card. Okay, now I understand the scheme.

0:29:39 Chris: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. So, so you're using that as a natural marking on the card and by turning some and not others, you've now indicated to yourself which cards are marked, you know, which cards are high value. So the funny thing is like all of these things, if he had done them independently, if he'd said, I want a shuffle machine and ask for nothing else, So you think, no big deal. He wants to get through a bunch of different, you know, a bunch of shoes. He want to move quickly. He wanted to play fast. Great. If he had asked for the purple deck alone, well, maybe purple is his lucky color. You know, if he had even asked to turn the high value cards sometimes, you might think, oh, it's just a superstition. But when you put these together, I don't know. And there was a question at one point, is the supervisor who's back there watching the game, is he just not paying attention? Is he in on it? Because it's so obvious that these things are not just random, that you'd ask for all of these things.

0:29:45 Andrew: Right, right.

0:30:33 Chris: There's a reason. And the one thing that you do learn in the casino industry is even if you don't know why, if something feels uncomfortable, there's probably a Reason for it. So you should react to those things. You should be calling surveillance. You should be calling others over to assist you and say, "Look, he's he's requesting these things. What do you think?" Apparently they were so excited they had Phil Ivey and all his money in the house that they thought, you know, we'll just let them do it. It's astounding because, so I work in a Pennsylvania casino. We have one of the most regulated gaming environments in, in the country.

And when I was in law school, I actually took gaming law, and they used New Jersey as an example of a very strict gaming environment. But somewhat recently, Jersey has basically deregulated casino gaming, and so you don't have as much of a presence of a gaming control board looking over your shoulder.

So I'm guessing if this had happened eight or nine years ago, they would have never gotten to this point because they would not have let the manipulation of the game, because the gaming control board would never put up with it.

0:30:43 Andrew: Well, This edge sorting method, Ivy, as my understanding is, is that Ivy was able to then shift the game of Baccarat from a small advantage to the house to a significant advantage to the player. And in multiple sessions, it's alleged in the court documents, he won $9.6 million playing with this unfair advantage. And so the casino sued Ivy to get not only the $9.6 million back, but some additional stuff that we'll talk about as we go go through. And they really had two different theories of the case. The first was a fraud theory, right, that said Phil Ivey came in and defrauded the casino by saying he was going to play back rat, but instead by, you know, going through this kind of rigmarole, edge sort the cards.

0:32:27 Andrew: And that claim was dismissed. They lost on that claim. The casino lost on that claim in October. I'm going to link this document in the show notes. But at the same time, they won on the other claim, which was a breach of contract claim, which is very, very weird to me. It is actually a breach.

0:32:45 Thomas: So this is Like what we've talked about a long time ago before, where you try to put as many different arguments in as you can so that maybe one of them is going to stick. Interesting.

0:32:50 Andrew: Yes. Right. Right, right. And so fraud is, as Chris knows, you have to plead fraud with greater specificity. You have to prove intent. It's a much harder tort to bring against someone. Bringing a contract claim just strikes me as incredibly odd because, you know, when you think about going to play cards in a casino, that's not really the situation that any of us think about as a contractual relationship. But yeah, well, that's and that that's exactly what the claim was, was that there was an implied contractual duty to play the game as required by New Jersey law.

And then there are a variety of New Jersey statutes. This is the New Jersey Annotated Statutes 5, Section 12-113, 114, and 115. And those statutes govern, make it a crime to, quote, use or assist another in the use of a computerized electronic, electrical, or mechanical device which is designed, constructed, or programmed specifically for use in obtaining an advantage at playing any game at a licensed casino. You know, it's a crime to mark cards. It's a it's a crime. To possess a cheating device, you know, like something that can adjust the roles on on the slot machines, things like that.

0:32:53 Thomas: Oh there's not any sort of like implied contract or anything from yeah

0:34:13 Andrew: But what's very, very interesting is there's no, all of these statutes prior to Phil Ivey, to, for as far as I understand, there's never been a case that has held someone has marked the cards without physically touching the cards, right? Like usually when you mark cards, you know what you do is you crimp the corners or what, and obviously Chris can speak more you know directly to that I don't know if you've seen it but but go ahead yeah

0:34:37 Chris: Yeah, that it it's pretty, it's very sophisticated now, and generally you'll, you'll look for players with glasses on, because they will mark them with kind of an invisible ink, and they will use the glasses, like, and a lot of times you'll have one player will mark the cards and one player we'll read the cards, even a couple of hours later, um, but they're pretty sophisticated about it now. It's also fairly rare, because it's, you get caught, you're caught, you know, uh, you know, that's, and that's like, you mentioned

0:35:05 Andrew: I've seen I've seeing casino so

0:35:06 Chris: Yeah

0:35:07 Thomas: Let's say how many how many murders did you carry out where are you allowed to talk about them or

0:35:07 Andrew: Yeah

0:35:08 Chris: I'm not allowed to speak about that then what what happens in the back room stays in the background, but uh, uh, so it's fairly rare, but but they are are very sophisticated about the way that they do it now.

0:35:12 Thomas: Yeah and

0:35:13 Andrew: Yeah So, in order to prevail on this theory, the casino had to get over two hurdles, right? The first hurdle was they had to win that there is an implied contractual duty when you go into a casino as a patron to play the game by the full legal letter of the law. And then second, they had the right to win that that law would extend to gaining an advantage or marking the cards in a situation where Ivy didn't do any of those things in the traditional sense, right? Like, he's not using a, like, like the device that they claim in the complaint that he's using is his request for the automatic shuffler, right, which, as as Chris points out, right, that's not like a traditional device that you think of as being used to cheat in a casino, right? It's a perfectly legitimate device standing alone.

0:36:16 Chris: And it's a device that casinos love because it gets them more hands per minute and more hands permitted is more money. So yeah, it's really interesting.

0:36:17 Andrew: It's just right.

0:36:24 Thomas: And well and All this being said, it's also, there's some amount of a hurdle of, they agreed to all this, I right, would think, okay, maybe there's an implied contract, but then if there's also this agreement to make these considerations for Phil Ivey and to have the automatic shuffler and to whatever the different components of it, if they agreed to all that, isn't that also part of that implied contract?

0:36:47 Chris: Wow. Does he get extra credit on Thomas Takes the Bar? Because that's...

0:36:51 Thomas: I need it. Chris, can I ask you? Maybe you can give me some. How does that work? Can you talk to somebody?

0:36:57 Chris: I mean, that was exactly the question I was going to ask Andrew. I am admittedly a little bit out of practice. I haven't been practicing law in several years. But to me, if you've got an implied contract, then when you ask the other party to modify that contract, which is what it looks like to me Ivy did, and they accept those terms and you continue playing, I don't know exactly how you couldn't consider that part of the modified implied contract that you've just created. Yeah.

0:37:04 Andrew: Yeah.

0:37:25 Andrew: And I think that's exactly right. The only way that I think you get out of that is through their fraud claim, which the court dismissed. Right. In other words, if I ask, the ruling is weird because if I want to modify an implied promise with an explicit promise, then it certainly would be a defense to argue, well, hey, your explicit promise was fraudulent in some way. Right. Like it was meant to. I never would have agreed to this if you had not misled me about why you were doing it. But Right. They lost on the fraud claim. So I am, I am befuddled. I mean, that's, it's, I'm, I'm very proud of Thomas for asking the question that, that to me is kind of the whole linchpin of this case, is that, you know, what you have is you have a judge construing the law as liberally as possible, in favor of the casino.

0:37:35 Thomas: Yeah, right.

0:38:25 Chris: And One of my favorite parts about this too, is how the casino became aware that something was up. And the only way they became aware is that other casinos, I believe they were in England, had sued Ivy for the same reason. So they said, wait a second, remember that $9.5 million? Maybe we got jobbed, too. That's how unaware they were of this entire situation yeah

0:38:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:51 Andrew: And let's talk a little bit about the damages. Ivy won $9.6 million at Baccarat. But the casino didn't ask for $9.6 million. They had initially asked for, I believe, $17 million. And what they wanted was, they didn't just want, because in breach of contract cases, you can either, get a ruling that says, let's put the parties back in the position they would have been in had they not made the contract at all. Or you can ask a court to award expectation damages. And so what the casino asked for was, they said, look, if he'd come in with the amount of bankroll that he had and played Baccarat without cheating, he would have lost a certain amount. So we want not only his winnings, but we want the expected losses that he should have had. Now the court did reject that. Uh, but the reason they get to $10.1 million is because, um, Ivy took a portion of his Baccarat winnings and then went and played craps and won another half million dollars at craps.

0:39:34 Thomas: He would have lost us this certain amount. Wow.

0:39:57 Thomas: Now, what do you think about that, Andrew? Cause I, for my, you know, I guess I think I'm just as much a lawyer as you guys. I've proven that I'm just absolutely, but I'm curious, just one lawyer to another, like at your opinion, uh, what do you think about? Cause I, that sounds like if, if he played craps totally normally, no, nothing fraudulent going on. How do you just decide that because he used money, he won in something else. He can't have those winnings for all we know, he had the extra money, some by some other source. He didn't even, he might've not even used those chips. Like maybe he used some, you know, it would be a little weird to me if to get that additional 500,000 back yeah

0:40:04 Andrew: Right. Yeah. I, yeah,

0:40:05 Chris: Well

0:40:35 Andrew: No, I was stunned at that. I mean, I'm to say maybe bad lawyering on the

0:40:41 Thomas: Yeah

0:40:41 Andrew: Part of the defense, but there's a very straightforward.

0:40:41 Chris: I mean there's I don't remember that much I

0:40:45 Andrew: Oh, go ahead.

0:40:46 Chris: don'T remember that much from law school but one thing I do remember is the phrase money is fungible and that's the First thing that came to mind that money is fungible, so this money is no different from that money. How can you claim that that money, you know, was was the cause of his winnings at craps, essentially, potentially?

0:40:51 Thomas: Yeah

0:40:51 Andrew: Right.

0:41:01 Andrew: And And Let's Add on top of it that that might be a good argument if it were any of the three of us. Right. We we go in, you know, none of us are multimillionaires. I mean, I don't I'm speaking for myself and Thomas. Maybe maybe Chris is independently wealthy, Thing, uh, you know, you could say there's no way any of the three of us could have put up a million bucks at craps and won 500,000, uh, but Phil Ivy is a multi-millionaire, right, he's made plenty of money from poker, uh, and endorsements and everything else, he's he's certainly rich enough on his own, uh, to play craps and, um, and I'm shocked

0:41:01 Thomas: That Makes no Sense, yeah.

0:41:12 Chris: No, you're speaking for me as well.

0:41:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:41:36 Thomas: Like if you took

0:41:36 Andrew: At that result

0:41:37 Thomas: That money and bought some stocks and then they went up as well like could they get the casino could get that money too, like just because you know they're using he's using their money like it doesn't make any sense.

0:41:38 Andrew: Yeah. It by this Yeah. Yeah, I mean by this ruling that that would certainly be part of the implication and, uh, I mean I, I have read, uh, that Ivy intends to appeal, um, if he's looking for a qualified appellate lawyer, somebody who does those kind of cases, uh, Phil, give me a call, um, but, uh, I think you have a, you have, have a pretty good case on appeal, but I mean, he's going to have to post a bond for the, for the $10 million in order to appeal the judgment. So yeah.

0:41:57 Thomas: Interesting.

0:42:13 Thomas: How much does that mean, he has to post the full thing or or the Ballpark, ballpark. Yeah. So I was just wondering,

0:42:17 Andrew: Yeah. Supersedeas bonds are, Yeah, no, no. But I, in a case like this where you don't have another independent independent asset, um, I suspect he's going to have to post the whole thing. Um, I mean, he might, you know, he might find a place that's willing. You typically bonding companies are used to, uh. Issuing appellate bonds to, you know, corporations that have assets that, you know, take a huge verdict at trial and then want to appeal. And so, you know, like IBM, for example, it's really, really easy to, to, uh, you know, to issue a $10 million, uh supersedeas bond to, to IBM. Uh, but, but to an individual who doesn't have any assets, as far as I know, in the state of New Jersey, like, yeah, I, I mean, I think he's going to have to post the whole amount. Now again, I mean one of the nice things about being a, uh multimillionaire, uh famous poker player is that he probably can't, um, right.

0:42:21 Thomas: Oh wow.

0:43:09 Thomas: Well, and the, and they have the winnings, right. Or they supposedly,

0:43:12 Andrew: But, but Chris can speak to that. I mean that's, you that's going to, yeah, that's gonna severely deplete his bankroll, so.

0:43:12 Thomas: Oh, this is from 2012. I didn't realize it was so it happened so long ago too. So maybe not. Yeah, let me ask you guys, I've seen a quote from Ivy that the things that he was trying to do, the things that he did is equivalent to the casino offering free alcohol served by the most curvaceous and voluptuous females in the industry, like that. They're trying to distract him with that. And he's saying, like, well, what I'm doing is kind of akin to that. What do you do by that as an argument?

0:43:46 Chris: I don't buy it completely, but what I do buy is the way that Ivy really views this is as a poker player. And as a broker player, you're looking for any edge that you can get. You Know, you know that certain players will not react well to you speaking to them while you play. Certain players are going to give off, you know, quote unquote, tells. Certain players can't handle, you know, high stakes games. So he was thinking, I believe, the same way as a poker player would, and his opponent was the casino. So he was looking for any edge, and for that reason, I don't, I truly think he doesn't see it as as doing anything wrong. He just got the same kind of edge that the casino has with mathematics, mathematics, he just got it a little bit more creatively.

0:43:57 Thomas: Yeah,

0:44:26 Andrew: Yeah, he actually raised this argument at trial. It made its way into the first opinion where it also took the form of, this is no different than a play-action pass in football. And that, you know what I mean? He used sort of misdirection to, right.

0:44:40 Thomas: Well, There's An implied Contract that You're Going to pass and you Can't violate that implied contract by then running or no, sorry, the opposite. But yeah.

0:44:45 Chris: And

0:44:44 Andrew: Right. And and that's No, that's right. I mean, that was the analogy that was being made. And from my perspective, I mean, it's to me this sort of illustrates the distinction between when you are applying sort of the letter of the statutes versus trying to ascertain the intent. So there's no New Jersey law that says it is against the law and invalid to try and cheat the casino. Instead, what it says is you can't mark the cards. You can't bring in a device.

0:45:33 Andrew: You there isn't anything in the law that specifically prohibits, uh, what Phil Ivy did here. So I think that adds to it.

0:45:38 Thomas: Is this the air bud defense where there's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball?

0:45:41 Andrew: Yeah. That says a dog can't play. Uh, no, but, but I mean, think about that, right? Like if, if the law said, you it is a criminal, uh misdemeanor in New Jersey to enter into any scheme to change the odds in a casino, right? Like, they could pass that as a law that would, I think, pass muster, right, I mean, it's not unconstitutionally vague or whatever, and then if that were the law, this would be a no-brainer, right.

0:45:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:10 Andrew: He engaged in all of these, you know, sort of little actions with the permission of the casino to change The Odds, but that's not what the law says. Go ahead, Chris.

0:46:19 Chris: And I don't see how how it's not analogous to card counting which we all know is not illegal, it is frowned upon, but card counting uses the cards to keep track of what is left in the shoe to give yourself a a mathematical advantage. So in my mind, this is really an analogy to exactly what was done. So what will happen is if you're caught card counting, the casino doesn't want your presence there because you now have an advantage, but they can't take your money back. All they can do is tell you you can't play anymore. I don't know how this is that much different.

0:46:24 Andrew: Yeah.

0:46:36 Andrew: No.

0:46:52 Thomas: Interesting.

0:46:52 Andrew: That's a really good point. I hadn't thought about that.

0:46:54 Thomas: Well, I'm seeing here that he lost the appeal in the British court and he had to repay that casino. So who knows if that's I don't know. The law, I'm sure, is different to some degree. But who knows If that's a sign of what will happen with this appeal?

0:47:10 Andrew: Yeah, it I mean, I would say there are sort of two things that that are at issue there. The first is, again, if the British law, you know, is more akin to what I've set out. Right. That's that says, you Know, in general, you can't change the odds, then that wouldn't surprise me. And the second is, um, you know, a reality in, in litigation is, you know, that the house always wins, right? Like that, that, it. This seems to me to be a very, very clear example of, uh. A judge in New Jersey, knowing that gaming is very, very important to the economy of New Jersey. Uh, putting his thumb on the scale for the casino, even though, you the facts don't quite match up, he's going to extend the benefit of the doubt to the casino and not to the player.

0:47:57 Andrew: And even in a situation where you're talking about a billion dollar casino versus a millionaire superstar, there's still a rather significant imbalance in both wealth and power. And this sort of thing happens a lot. And I think it's important to call it out because we have, um, political, uh, activity on, um, you know, sort of both sides of the aisle of, of, about, um, now, plaintiffs lawsuits, right? Like, you know, we just did that in the, in episode thirty one, following up, right? Like that, that there's sort of public outrage over, uh, you know, people getting windfall, uh, damage awards from spilling a a cup of coffee on themselves. And I think that it's worth pointing out there's not the same level of outrage, probably because it's billionaire versus millionaire and there's no real little guy in this.

0:48:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:48:48 Andrew: But this is a really clear example, in my view, of a judge just putting his thumb on the scale for the big casino.

0:48:56 Chris: Gaming cases can be really interesting. This is one of those, and I'll be interested to see if anything more comes of it. No, just I really appreciate you guys having me on. Thanks very much.

0:49:05 Thomas: Oh, absolutely. Thanks for coming on. That was really fun.

0:49:07 Andrew: Yeah. Thanks for being here. And Chris, if you want to tell Tell the listeners where they can hear more of you.

0:49:12 Chris: Sure. So we we have a podcast. It is the Titletown Sound Packers Fan Podcast. You can find us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, as well as at Titletownsoundoff.com. Please visit us if you're a Packers fan or if you are not and maybe you are shopping for a new NFL team. We don't take ourselves too seriously. We try to have a lot of fun on the podcast. And so if you If you are a Packers fan, check us out. We appreciate it.

0:49:38 Thomas: Really cool.

0:49:39 Andrew: Yeah, that's a good show. I listen. I am a Ravens fan, so whatever that's worth. But it's a great show. It's good show here.

0:49:47 Chris: Well, we appreciate it, thanks.

0:49:49 Thomas: Awesome. Yeah. Thanks. We'll check it out. It'll be in the show notes and thanks for joining us.

0:49:53 Andrew: Thanks, Chris.

0:50:02 Thomas: Okay, breaking down the law. Once again, everybody's favorite intro. We don't go a week without getting an email about how everyone loves this stupid intro, but that's good. Uh, Mark, oh man. Okay, uh, I'll try. Mark DeMonbrun asks, what's the difference? Oh man, this is one that I have almost asked you so many times, and I'll either forget or I'll feel like there's some obvious answer that I'll feel like an idiot for not knowing, but I swear I have almost asked you this several times. What is the difference between lawyer and attorney? Are they completely interchangeable?

0:49:56 Clip: The law breaking down

0:50:38 Andrew: And the answer is they're completely interchangeable.

0:50:40 Thomas: Was hoping For something better than that.

0:50:41 Andrew: Yeah. And as we have pointed. So I know, for example, in in English courts, right, there's a difference between a barrister and a solicitor. And I don't know what that difference is that, you know, one gets to wear the powdered wig. I'm serious

0:50:51 Thomas: Yeah. I Was Gonna say like maybe The color on the powdered wig is slightly different. Yeah, I think

0:50:58 Andrew: That one of them, I believe that the distinction, we have a lot of British listeners. So hopefully somebody from the UK can weigh in. But I believe one of Them gets to where the powdered wig and one does not, which that's a tradition we really needed to have not lost here in this country.

0:51:16 Thomas: One of us should wear a powdered wig if I, okay, if I pass, I pledge to the listeners right Right now. If I pass the bar 200 questions later, like it's going to take, it'll be years from now. If I passed the bar, I'm going to wear a powdered wig recording. I will take a picture and show it to you. That's what I will do just for fun.

0:51:21 Andrew: Oh Wow That's That's outstanding. I cannot wait for that. Um, so I, yeah, so no difference between lawyer, attorney, counselor. Uh, also, um, we talked about this in a very early episode, um, there's no legal uh restriction on the use of the term esquire, so uh, Bill, Bill S. Preston, Esquire, from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, is actually, he's he is just as entitled to call himself EsquIRE as any lawyer.

0:51:58 Thomas: Oh, you don't even have to be trained. You don't, you don'T even have TO BE ON A LEGAL PODCAST ANSWERING BAR QUESTIONS. You can just, just anybody can just say, Oh, okay. I thought there was some requirement. Like you had to be working with a lawyer or something? Nothing? Oh.

0:52:06 Andrew: No, no. Yeah. And no, no, I typically I think this is this is common practice. This. I use Esquire when I am copying a document to, you know, and in the CC field at the bottom of a letter and that, and those CCs go out to some clients, non-lawyers and lawyers as well. And I will identify the lawyers with an EsquIRE suffix as An honorific. That's really the only time, uh, that that I use it, uh, and and and I think that's that's fairly common practice, uh, but no, I like, I like the question because there are a lot of these that, um, I mean, one of the the real joys of of doing the show is, um, you know, to get questions that, um, you know, when I'm in kind of my legal bubble. Yeah.

0:52:41 Thomas: Sense. Yeah.

0:53:03 Andrew: That you Don't You don' realize

0:53:03 Thomas: As A lawyer, Attorney, Esquire, You Never Dreamed that someone would be confused why these terms are used interchangeably. I Thought There Might Be something There. Like, I was pretty sure that they were interchangeable, but I was like, maybe there's some corner thing where you have to say attorney in certain contexts, but I guess not.

0:53:05 Andrew: Yeah, Right, Yeah, That And I Don't Know why. Yeah.

0:53:22 Andrew: So it's a lot of fun to to to see, you where people may have that I wouldn't have thought they would have. And so I thought this was a fun question.

0:53:29 Thomas: Awesome. Thanks for the question, and, uh, thanks for breaking that down, Andrew. And then we've got to thank our, our Hall of Fame patrons, are all-time greats: Roger Metcalf, Danny Rosari, Eli Bosnick, Dave Nichols of Positively Doubtful Podcast, Steve Sigmund, Jim Grove, Desecrator, Patrick Fussell, Amanda Lipnack, La Bibliotecatrice, Heather Loveridge, Geeker41, Sean Pitti, Ian and Ali, Matthew Vernon and Violet Page Hall. Thank you guys so much.

0:54:00 Andrew: Thank you to John Bodley, to Heath Enwright, Jeffrey Mainer, the Wayward Willis, Detective Matthew Maxson, Leon Hartley, K, Matthieu Hillier, Skeptic, uh, Hunter Ash, Kylie Riser, Jeff S, Sakashite, Fukasumi, Pro Panic, Philip Stromberg, Michael Schaefer, Michaela, Rob V, Michael, Frederick Alstromer, Sammy, Conrad Michaels, Zabby, and the Inciting Incident podcast. Thank you all so much for your longstanding and high-level Hall of Fame support for the show. That really made it possible for us to do this show twice a week. We really appreciate it.

0:54:36 Thomas: Absolutely.

0:54:37 Clip: Oh, no associate of this firm has ever failed the bar exam. No kidding.

0:54:44 Thomas: It is time for, well, now I could say this is my favorite segment, so fun. Oh, I love this segment. I'm coming up earlier in the week when, uh, when I got a question right, uh, yeah, no, it's great segment, uh, time for question five. I'm feeling, I got new lease on life, I feel like I'm finally gonna make it at Covington Burlington Co-Factory. I feel like I have a chance here. I have the future. So let's hear it. Bar question number five. I

0:55:04 Andrew: Right. Okay. Bar Question number five. A creditor instituted a garnishment action against a woman who owed the creditor a back due debt. This was the first action taken, and the credtor did not have a judgment. It served the notice of garnishment on the garnishee, the woman's employer. The employer honored the notice by holding all of the woman's earnings in escrow pending the creditor's lawsuit and the entrance of a final judgment against the woman. The state where the defendant lived and worked had a provision for prejudgment garnishment, as long as the money was held and not distributed until the judgment was entered. The money would be paid to the woman if a judgment was not entered within the next 120 days. The woman sued the employer and the credtor, demanding the release. Will the court order the garnishee to release the funds to the woman? Lot of kind of specialized terms in that question. But but did the question make sense?

0:56:05 Thomas: Think so. I'm a little surprised by it, but we'll see what the answers are.

0:56:10 Andrew: OK, so as usual, we have four answers for a yes, no question. So the answers are A, no, because the state procedure for protecting the woman's money until a judgment is entered is a fair one that comports with procedural due process. B, no because the State has an interest in protecting the rights of creditors to collect debts through the garnishment procedure. C, yes because the only party that has garnishment rights in the United States is the Internal Revenue Service. Or D, yes, because the interim freezing of wages without a chance to be heard violates procedural due process.

0:56:49 Thomas: I'm really heavily leaning towards C&D because 120 days sounds incredibly outrageous to me. The idea that just because you have a pending judgment, someone could hold your wages for 120 days, that cannot be true. I will be highly suspicious if that's true, um, but It's a question of, is there an exception for the IRS, uh, can you read Sc one more time, how that was worded, man?

0:57:15 Andrew: Yeah. C says, yes, Because the only party that has garnishment rights in The United States is the Internal Revenue Service.

0:57:23 Thomas: But it, but it still, now that, that's still weird to me because I, I do feel like there would be some prioritizing of the IRS, but I don't know that it would, that it would apply like for the 120 days and all that. I'm not sure that factors in, so D was just because it violates due process or something, you Know, I'm gonna go with D. I'm going to take a gamble that this is one of the easy ones and just say that it does. I don't think that you can hold wages for a pending lawsuit. I'm going to say it's D because this is an obvious one. I'm, I'm a little worried that it's C, and we'll find out next week if I'm completely wrong, and it's A or B.

0:57:42 Andrew: Correct. Procedural due process.

0:58:07 Andrew: All right. And listeners, definitely play along with Thomas. When we release this episode, we announce that on Twitter. Our Twitter account is at @OpenArgs, and quote that release notice along with your answer and an explanation. We have allowed, as part of the explanation, people have attached photos of Lengthy Analysis, uh, sometimes that wins, sometimes really pithy, hilarious, uh, uh Bits have won. Um, I, I think we've had a lot of fun, uh, seeing our listeners play along with us, and and we think, we think, uh, uh, you guys are enjoying this segment as well. I Know, I know I am, and and now that Thomas is at 500 again, I know he is So So My

0:58:29 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I know, yeah. I hated it a second ago. I really just, I wanted to get rid of this segment. I thought it was just total BS. We shouldn't be doing it. Now I love it. Favorite segment. No, I think it's great. Even if I get 198 wrong and too right, which could be the case, I, I still do enjoy it a lot. I think it makes for a great segment and, yeah, get creative with your answers, uh, if you want to be, because lots of people are getting the right answer, Andrew, it seems like, uh, more than, more than it'll be more than one, let's put it that way. So just the right answer might not get you that shout out but maybe a good explanation, or maybe a funny explanation, something like that.

0:59:26 Andrew: Favorite part is that we have a number of lawyers and law students who listen to the show. By the way, if you are a law student, us an email, we'd like to talk to you about whether you're enjoying the show and sharing it with fellow law students. But I love when we get, you know, a couple of weeks ago, we had, know, the engineer's approach to the answer who got the right answer where some lawyers got the answer wrong. So that's, I'm really enjoying this sort of, you tearing back the veil and letting everyone see what taking the bar exam is like.

0:59:47 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, that Was really funny. Yeah, Yeah, really cool. Right, well, that does it For our show today, uh, another great one, uh, really fun stuff, the bar exam segment, Chris was a great interview, thanks again to Chris Kristofco for coming on the show, and be sure to check out his links in the show notes and the places he said to find him, uh, we're loving this new format and the twice a week, and anything and add to that, Andrew?

1:00:26 Andrew: Nope. Nope.

1:00:28 Thomas: His catchphrase. Next shirt is going to be Andrew Torrez' catchphrASE. It'll just be quote, nope, quote, end quote, Andrew Torrez. And then don't take legal advice from a podcast. All right. Thanks again for another great week and we'll see you guys next time.

1:00:51 Clip: This has been Opening Arguments with Andrew and Thomas. If you love the show and want to support future episodes, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/law. If you can't support us financially, it'd be a big help if you could leave us a five star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever podcast delivery vehicle you use. And be sure to tell all your friends about us. For questions, suggestions, and complaints, email us at openarguments@gmail.com. The show notes and links are on our website at www.openargs.com. Be sure to like our page on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at OpenArgs. Until next time. This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC. All rights reserved.