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WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Company that owns casinos sues app developer for breach of agreement

Lawsuits
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WILMINGTON, Del. — A lawsuit has been filed in Delaware involving a company that owns two West Virginia casinos.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Chancery Court of Delaware last week, involves a sports betting controversy that impacted Wheeling Island Casino and Racetrack in Wheeling and Mardi Gras Casino in Nitro, according to MetroNews.

Delaware North iGaming Inc. (DNG) filed the lawsuit against Miomni Gaming Ltd. and Michael P. Venner on Friday, claiming that they breached their agreement with DNG, according to the complaint.

DNG and Miomni entered into a joint venture to develop and manage BetLucky Interactive. The purpose of BetLucky was to offer, promote and market an online and mobile sports betting and gaming platform.

"During negotiations for the joint venture, Miomni and Venner repeatedly represented to DNG that Miomni owned the intellectual property rights in the Platform, including the source code underlying the 'front-end interface' and the 'back-end' of the Platform," the complaint states.

DNG claims it relied on those representations when it made the decision to contract with Miomni.

BetLucky's platform went live Dec. 27 in West Virginia but ceased functioning March 6, according to the suit. DNG claims it learned soon after that Miomni and Venner had falsely misrepresented the platform.

DNG claims Miomni never owned the source code for the back end of the platform and, instead, licensed the object code of the back end from Enterg Software Solutions, also known as Entergaming. It claims the defendants concealed this information.

"When Miomni could not resolve its licensing dispute with Entergaming ... Entergaming disabled the Platform, leaving DNG, its affiliates, and BetLucky with a sudden loss of business operations," the complaint states.

DNG claims that Miomni cannot perform under the joint venture agreement because its only contribution to BetLucky, the license, was illusory from the beginning.

"Miomni nevertheless remains defiant," the complaint states. "Miomni denies that it is in breach, and has indicated that it intends to obstruct DNG’s contractual right to acquire Miomni’s membership interest in BetLucky."

DNG is seeking an order transferring Miomni's membership interest in BetLucky to DNG, as well as compensatory damages. It is represented by M. Duncan Grant, Joanna J. Cline and Christopher B. Chuff of Pepper Hamilton; and Robert J. Fluskey and William A. Ciszewski of Hodgson Russ.

MetroNews reported that the BetLucky app did well when it was running in West Virginia and reported it brought in more than $210,000 in wagers at Mardi Gras in February and nearly $145,000 in bets at Wheeling Island.

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