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87 Nev. 189

484 P.2d 565

Corbin v. O'KEEFE

Nevada Supreme Court

Decided April 28, 1971

Nevada Supreme Court · decided 1971-04-28

Relies on West Indies v. First Nat. Bank of Nevada · Weisbrod v. Fremont Hotel, Inc. · Scott v. Courtney

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1971-04-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 30 later decisions — most recently August 1991 · most notably Flamingo Resort, Inc. v. United States (1982), Sea Air Support, Inc. v. Herrmann (1980)

4 federal appellate · 4 district · 14 state decisions

200197119801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1 OPINION

Per Curiam:

¶2 By this action Kenneth W. Corbin seeks to recover $20,000 on a winning bet of $100 at 200-to-l odds that the Boston Red Sox would win the American Baseball League pennant in 1967. Corbin placed the bet at the Jockey Turf Club in March 1967. When he attempted to collect on the bet in the fall of 1967 the club’s proprietors rebuffed his attempts on the basis that the bet had been taken by an employee who failed to record it and who kept the money, so the club never received the bet.

¶3 Corbin and his attorneys subsequently sought aid of the Nevada Gaming Control Board but were denied relief. Thereafter, Corbin commenced this civil action seeking to enforce the bet in the Second Judicial District Court. The court granted the respondents’ motion to dismiss on the basis that gambling debts are not collectible through the courts.

¶4*190 1. It is clear from the complaint and record in this case that what is presented is a court action for recovery of a gambling debt. Corbin makes recurring references to the asserted arbitrariness of the Gaming Control Board in denying his claim, but he is not seeking review of the administrative procedures followed. Therefore, we need not address such questions as the asserted arbitrariness, exhaustion of administrative remedies and, indeed, the very reviewability of administrative procedures in this area.

¶5 2. We are thus presented with the same question presented in Weisbrod v. Fremont Hotel, 74 Nev. 227, 326 P.2d 1104 (1958). Corbin concedes as much, but urges us to overturn Weisbrod.

¶6 We decline to do so. This court has refused to aid in the collection of gambling debts for nearly a century and we will not depart from those cases. See especially Scott v. Courtney, 7 Nev. 419 (1872); West Indies v. First Nat. Bank, 67 Nev. 13, 214 P.2d 144 (1950); and Weisbrod.

¶7 Affirmed.

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