Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court on Thursday (Jan. 2) will begin hearing appeals by a local hotel owner who was requested to pay a Vietnamese-American casino gambler $55.5mln at the trial nearly one year ago.

At the trial court on Jan. 7, 2013, Dai Duong Joint Venture Company, which owns the five-star Sheraton Saigon Hotel, was shocked to hear the court’s judgment that the company must pay $55,542,291.70 (over VND1,154 billion) to the plaintiff, Ly Sam, a 61-year-old American entrepreneur of Vietnamese origin. 

Dai Duong insisted that the evidence provided by the plaintiff was not sufficient for the court to announce that Sam was the winner. The company has provided evidence to prove that the winning result was invalid since a technical problem occurred on the machine that Sam used. Therefore, Dai Duong said it will appeal the verdict in the upcoming appeal hearing that is due to take place on Jan. 2, 2014.

Also at the trial, the court also ruled that Dai Duong, as a losing party, must pay the court fee of VND1.2 billion. 

The court rejected Dai Duong’s argument that the winning result was “invalid” due to “some fault” with the game machine Sam used. The court said that the winning amount was displayed on the machine’s screen, and that there was no error report issued by the machine. Therefore, Dai Duong is responsible for paying the prize to the winner.

Ly Sam (R) in the trial court on December 28, 2012 (Photo by Tuoi Tre)

As previously reported, on October 25, 2009, Sam played gambling at the club. When the machine reported that he won the huge cash prize, Sam asked the club to make a report to confirm the winning result but the club’s manager refused to do so, just promising to pay the prize to the winner within three days.

Sam himself made a report on his winning and many other game players at the club put their signatures on the minutes as witnesses.

He also took some photos of the machine that reported the wining result.

Four days ago, Sam sent Dai Duong a letter asking for the prize but the company did not respond. In another letter to Dai Duong a month later, Sam stressed that the company had to be responsible for paying the prize.

Ewarton Consultancy Co., Ltd, an affiliate of Dai Duong, later replied to Sam that “the winning result was invalid because it had resulted from something wrong that happened to the game machine.”

Dai Duong just agreed to pay Sam $300, the amount of money he spent for gambling at the casino because according to current regulations, if a machine has technical problems, the casino will refund customers.

Not accepting such an argument, Sam has sued Dai Duong to court.