Another thread has closed in the ongoing Postlegate debacle. We discovered at the end of last week that the 88-person lawsuit might be in settlement talks with Stones Gambling Hall and tournament director Justin Kiraitis.
Then, over the weekend, the news broke that Marle Cordiero’s separate lawsuit against Postle as an individual has been thrown out of court. Cordiero is a poker player, commentator, and one-half of the presenters of The Rake with Jamie and Marle.
She brought her own suit against Postle after he allegedly cheated on the live-streamed “Stones Live!” game in which she played.
Losers make for bad winners
Her suit is for $230,000 in damages because of losses incurred due to Postle having engaged “in a pattern and practice of using one or more wire communication mechanisms to defraud his opponents by gaining knowledge of their Hole Cards during the play of poker hands.”
This comes just days after Veronica Brill received suspect texts. These appear to be a shady attempt to draw her into some sort of legal or PR trap. Brill was the initial whistleblower in the Postlegate scandal and has been dealing with harassment ever since.
It's unclear whether Postle, one of his confederates, or one of his erstwhile co-defendants is behind this particular bit of apparent chicanery.
The tweet below from Postle shows more than a little ire:
Not in my back yard
The group lawsuit was originally against Stone, Kiriatis, and Postle. However, Postle left the case due to a technicality of California law. That law does not apply in Nevada, where Cordiero brought her case.
However, the court deemed that Cordiero’s case did not fall within the jurisdiction of Nevada law. Once again Postle got off, not because he has been proven innocent, but on a technicality. If Cordiero had won, Postle would have been subject to $250,000 in damages, and possibly to criminal charges.
Maurice Verstandig acts as Cordiero’s lawyer. He is also representing the 88 plaintiffs in the separate California case.
Verstandig made the argument for a trial in Nevada. The reasoning he gave was that Cordiero viewed the games in her home state of Nevada. The show was broadcast over the internet.
Therefore Postle had “lured [Cordiero]into participating, causing her to be ultimately swindled and defrauded by the defendant."
The court applied a test determined in Calder v. Jones (1984) which set the precedent that jurisdiction requires. Namely, that the defendant had committed the act intentionally, that the act had been aimed “expressly” at the forum state, and that the defendant caused “harm that the defendant knows is likely to be suffered in the forum state.”
In the words of the judge, Postle was “a participant of the broadcast games, not the broadcaster. Thus, the defendant did not ‘expressly aim’ his alleged poker misconduct at the state of Nevada.”
It was on these grounds that once again, Postle avoids the need to prove his innocence.
