The latest salvo has been fired in the ongoing case pitting poker professional Clonie Gowen against her alleged former employer, Full Tilt Poker. On January 6th, attorneys representing Tiltware, Inc., its relative companies, and the 13 fellow poker pros that Gowen brought her suit against filed a defendant motion for dismissal on several bases in United States District Court in Las Vegas.

As previously reported on Poker News Daily, Gowen filed a lawsuit in mid-November against Tiltware, Inc. (the developers of the Full Tilt Poker software), its alleged branch companies Pocket Kings Ltd. and Kolyma Corporation (foreign corporations set up after the start of Full Tilt Poker), and the “dotcom” and “dotnet” versions of the site. Gowen also added all of the “official” members of Team Full Tilt, which includes Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman, Mike Matusow, Allen Cunningham, Gus Hansen, and Patrik Antonius.

In the civil suit, Gowen alleged that she had been promised a 1% interest in the online poker room and its relative entities when she was hired as a member of Team Full Tilt in 2004. After not receiving any compensation for her services, Gowen alleges that the other members of Team Full Tilt started receiving payments. When she asked for her share of compensation, she stated that she was denied and instead “squeezed out” of the company. After she was summarily dismissed from Full Tilt as a professional representative for the site on November 11th, Gowen filed the suit, seeking up to $40 million (the 1% of the estimated $4 billion that Full Tilt and its relative entities are worth, according to Gowen and her attorneys) in compensation.

The 12 page motion for dismissal filed Tuesday by the Law Offices of Olson, Cannon, Gormley, and Desruisseaux of Las Vegas, Nevada asks for the case to be dismissed outright, for Gowen and her legal team to refine their charges and re-file their case, and/or for the individual players named in the original lawsuit to be dropped from the action.

One of the statements that is made in the introduction of the motion pertains to having the case dismissed against each of the Full Tilt Poker pros: “Ms. Gowen may, or may not, be able to make a claim for breach of an oral contract, but she certainly does not have a shotgun claim for fraud against her thirteen fellow poker pros, or a ‘minority oppression,’ or breach of fiduciary duty claim against the individual defendants.”

As the motion for dismissal continues, the Full Tilt legal team replies to each of the alleged violations of the oral agreement that Gowen says was in place. As to the breach of contract, the motion for dismissal contends that Gowen never states how the contract was implied (oral contract, written contract, or implied-in-fact). The Full Tilt legal team contends that, without a designated form of contract, the case is without merit, but could be re-filed with a more informative pleading. It also stresses the point that, even if a contract was in place, it would be between Gowen and Tiltware alone, not the other players mentioned in the original suit filed by Gowen.

The Full Tilt lawyers contend that Gowen was not a victim of fiduciary duty, as there wasn’t a fiduciary relationship between her and the rest of Team Full Tilt. The “bad faith” clause argued by Gowen in her suit should be dismissed, as there wasn’t “grievous or perfidious misconduct,” according to the attorneys. As to the final arguments presented by Gowen in her original suit, the attorneys for Full Tilt allege that she has already argued these points in her earlier accusations and they should be dismissed.

This case is shaping up to be one of the big poker stories of the early part of 2009. If Gowen can prove her case, she would be entitled to a sizeable chunk of the profits from Tiltware and Full Tilt itself.

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