Calvert v William Hill Credit Ltd

A bookmaker does not generally owe problem gamblers a duty to protect them from self-inflicted gambling losses. A duty may arise where a customer, presenting as vulnerable, specifically requests self-exclusion and the bookmaker deliberately undertakes to impose it without an effective disclaimer. The duty is confined to taking reasonable care to implement the particular exclusion undertaken. Breach does not establish recoverable loss unless the breach caused the claimant’s ruin or materially increased the aggregate harm. Where the claimant would probably have continued gambling elsewhere and suffered the same financial and psychiatric consequences, causation fails.

The claimant was a pathological gambler who used William Hill’s telephone betting service. In June 2006 he asked for his account to be closed and not reopened. A team leader assured him that he would be excluded from telephone betting for six months, but failed to process the request. The claimant later opened further accounts and incurred substantial losses.

He claimed damages in negligence for financial ruin and deterioration in his gambling disorder. The issues were whether William Hill owed a duty of care, whether that duty was breached, and whether the failure to exclude him caused recoverable loss.

1. Duty of care. The broad claim, based on a duty owed to problem gamblers generally, failed. Problem gambling covers a spectrum of impaired control, and a bookmaker cannot ordinarily be expected to diagnose pathological gambling. A general duty would also risk unjustifiably interfering with autonomy and making the bookmaker an insurer of gambling losses.
2. The narrower claim succeeded on duty. The claimant presented himself as a problem gambler, requested assistance, and accepted an assurance that he would be excluded from telephone betting for six months. The exchange had all the indicia of a contract save consideration and constituted an objective voluntary assumption of responsibility. The absence of the standard disclaimer was material. Foreseeability, proximity and fairness were satisfied, and the duty was confined to taking reasonable care to implement the promised telephone exclusion.
3. Breach. The team leader’s failure to pass the request to Customer Services and to implement the exclusion was plainly careless. The structural weakness in the wider system did not constitute an additional breach because the claimant’s substantial bets would probably have been detected and refused by Betting Control had the relevant exclusion code been entered.
4. Causation. The breach was a necessary cause of the particular William Hill telephone losses, but it was not the effective cause of the claimant’s ruin. He was already a pathological gambler, would probably have sought other gambling opportunities, and would ultimately have ruined himself by the end of 2007. The evidence did not establish that the accelerated route to ruin increased his aggregate financial or psychiatric harm.
5. The claim therefore failed. Quantum and contributory negligence did not arise. The judge observed that the wider effectiveness of private bookmaker self-exclusion was a matter for Parliament and the Gambling Commission.