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September 1, 2008
Last week in Florida a long drawn-out legal battle over bingo halls finally ended after 13 years, with an Orlando judge ordering Florida's Attorney General to pay $5.3 million in damages in favour of the bingo halls. For Gordon Paget, 69, it has been a long legal battle which has taken it's toll. But for his business partner Philip Furtney the winning judgement has come too late, he died last year aged 69. In the mid-1990's, the two businessmen opened a string of bingo halls across Florida in locations such as Kissimmee and Orlando. In 1995 bingo news headlines were made when authorities accused the partners of breaking bingo regulations, and the bingo halls were raided and shut down. The two men were then indicted on racketeering charges by a state grand jury in Orlando. Furtney spent many weeks imprisoned in the Orange County jail, and was acquitted by a jury in 1999, with authorities dropping charges against his partner Paget. However this didn't put an end to the legal dispute, with the attorney general's office pressing for a lawsuit for the bingo businessmen to pay damages. In 2005 the bingo case went before the Orange County jury again, and was decided in favour of the state. After an appeal, a new trial was finally held in June this year after Furtney's death 9 months previously. The final judgement was issued on Aug 20 by Senior Judge Lawrence V. Johnston with his ruling that the Attorney General's Office had no right to close the bingo halls and seize property, awarding $5.3 million in damages to the bingo hall partners, allbeit postmortem for Furtney. Written by Charlene Grey for BingoStreet.com - your one-stop resource for online bingo with the latest online bingo news and online bingo articles.
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