Tuesday, November 04, 2008

I'm suing Fitzgeralds






I was at the Fitzgeralds Casino last night. (I just now noticed that the name is not to be in the possessive form. But the tag/label I made for it erroneously already has the apostrophe in it, and it's too much trouble to fix it, so too bad.) I was in the "Club Fitz" office because I had received in the mail a coupon for $25 of free slot play, and had to redeem the coupon in the office before I could use it. (Took about ten minutes to run through that much on a "Wheel of Fortune" machine. Got nothing out of it.) While there, I noticed the "Blarney Stone" shown above.

Now, Fitzgeralds, more than about any joint in town that I can think of, stresses, in every possible way and on every possible surface, the idea of getting lucky. As you can see above, when I asked the cocktail waitress for a bottle of water to drink while I played poker, the stuff is called "Lucky Liquid."

But I was struck by the audacity of the last sentence of the sign under the Blarney Stone: "In the best of tradition of Blarney, rubbing the stone will surely make your day luckier."

Being the uber-skeptic that I am, I have considerable doubt that rubbing the stone will affect one's future gambling results for better or worse, for that day or for any other period of time. I think it's a lie, pure and simple. Among other questions, how is it that the results last exactly one day? Do the leprechauns in charge of this stuff keep a tally of what time you rubbed the stone, and when that day ends they cancel the charm?

So I want to sue Fitzgeralds for false advertising. They will have to prove in court that rubbing their stone makes one's day luckier.

But here's the catch. It's not exactly clear what "luckier" means in this context. Does it mean that rubbing the stone will make one's day luckier than it had been up to that point? Luckier than one's neighbor's day? Luckier than yesterday was? I think the most natural reading is that rubbing the stone will make one's day luckier than it would have been absent that action.

And therein lies my legal problem. What evidence can possibly be adduced either for or against the proposition that one's day will, from the point of rubbing the stone, become luckier than it otherwise would have been? Lacking a time machine, we can't run the day once with stone rubbing and once without it, leaving all other factors unchanged. As a result, I won't be able to prove that one's luck was not improved by rubbing the stone, and they won't be able to prove that it was improved.

So my lawsuit won't be filed right away. I have to have a little time to figure out this thorny legal problem. In the meantime, I'll just say that Fitzgeralds is spouting some serious B.S. If they think I'm libeling them for saying so, then they can sue me, and prove the case that they're telling the truth.

In case you're wondering, no, I did not either rub or kiss the Blarney Stone, and I scored a win at poker anyway. Imagine that.

Of course, I suppose that the response from the Fitzgeralds legal team would be that my lack of winning anything on the slot machine was because I failed to avail myself of the free luck enhancement offered to me in the Club Fitz office, when all I had to do was reach out and touch it.

Hmmm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So if you had rubbed the stone, you may have scored a bigger win.

Or if you had rubbed the stone you may have found a quarter on the floor.

Or if you had rubbed the stone you may have had perfect timing on a walk sign on the way home.

In order to win the lawsuit, you will have to complete extensive and compelling trials to see how many people have a measurable increase in luck, except that you don't know that there luck might have been worse (like hitting a yellow light on their drive home, or stubbing their toe walking between the bathroom and their bed in their hotel room that night).

I believe you have a difficult case to prove in a court of law.

Unknown said...

Good luck with that.