PokerStars has been ordered by the highest court in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany to pay €58,000 in losses that a consumer accrued by playing on an online casino before that activity became legal in Germany.
The Köln Higher Regional Court ruled that PokerStars must pay the losses, and overturned a lower court decision in the case. Between 2014-2020 the plaintiff in the case lost €58,517 playing online poker and blackjack at the Pokerstars.eu website. This was before the Fourth State Treaty on Gambling was approved by German states, creating a national legal online gaming framework.
At that time online gaming was only legal in one state: Schleswig-Holstein.
The court agreed with the plaintiff’s attorney’s argument that, although the plaintiff was breaking the law when he played on the website, the complaint was still valid. It also agreed that the website did not make clear that online gaming was only legal in Schleswig-Holstein.
The court declared, “Contrary to the opinion of the regional court, this information provided by the plaintiff is not unrealistic from the outset, but rather understandable,” said the court. “From the plaintiff’s point of view, there were no compelling indications that spoke for the illegality of the defendant’s range of games.”
