COMPULSIVE gambler Graham Calvert, who is suing William Hill for more than £2 million in the High Court, is on bail for firearms and drugs charges, police confirmed on Wednesday.
Former greyhound trainer Calvert, 28, is demanding Britain's largest bookmaker compensate him for the loss of only his money, but also his wife, health and livelihood.
A spokeswoman for Northumbria Police said Calvert is currently on bail after being charged with firearms offences and associated drugs offences and is scheduled to appear at Newcastle Crown Court on a date to be fixed.
Calvert claims Hills allowed him to carry on punting after he asked them to stop accepting his bets under its ‘self-exclusion' policy.
Anneliese Day, representing Calvert, told Mr Justice Briggs the company should be held liable because they failed to operate the policy designed to protect problem gamblers.
She said: “What occurred was that William Hill actively monitored and manipulated the claimant's gambling disorder in order to gain as much revenue fortheir business as possible.”
She said Calvert, of Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear, was hoping to establish in law for the first time that bookmakers owe a duty of care in his circumstances.
“Not only were his requests for self-exclusion incompetently implemented - in contrast to all the other major bookmakers who the claimant asked to exclude him and who adhered to this request - but William Hill also negligently sought to encourage the claimant to go on betting sprees of hundreds of thousands ofpounds at a time with greater and greater sums of money, and in circumstances strictly controlled by them, to ensure maximum revenue,” said Day.
The scale of her client's gambling was “staggering”, and at the height of his addiction he placed huge multiple bets in the space of a few hours.
Day said that Calvert, responsible for handling 2006 Greyhound Derby third Amarillo Slim, lost £347,000 in one bet alone when backing the United States to win the Ryder Cup two years ago, and ended up borrowing money to fund his addiction. “The claimant's descent from betting being a hobby to betting being a disorder appears to have commenced when he started betting by telephone,” she said.
Calvert began staking larger and larger sums of money with increasing frequency and decreasing regard for the consequences.
Miss Day said she would be calling psychiatrists to give evidence during the five-day hearing in order to demonstrate how Calvert had become a “pathological gambler” - a recognised mental disorder.
To cope with the problem of compulsive gambling, leading bookmakers offer self-exclusion, whereby a customer can ask for an account to be closed for six months or more. During the period, any request to reopen it is refused.
“One of the most striking features about this case is that William Hill stands alone among the other bookmakers in failing to put any effective control on the claimant's betting,” she said.
Cross-examined by Justin Fenwick QC, Calvert agreed his case was that he never gambled because of financial needs but did it for the “buzz”.
“I had been involved with gambling for most of my life and it had never been a problem.” he said.
Calvert confirmed he had given evidence lodged in court that, between 2000 and 2005,he had made £50,000 a year from gambling, mainly on greyhounds.
“I didn't get involved in any sport I did not know about until telephone gambling came in and that is when it became a problem,” said Calvert. “I was dealing in obscene amounts of money.”
Asked by Fenwick when he heard about self-exclusion, Calvert replied: “I didn't know anything about it until a William Hill representative offered it to me on the telephone.”
He said his gambling finally came to an end in 2006 “because I had no access to money“.
The case continues on Thursday.
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