Robert A. Nersesian

Grosjean and the Imperial Palace

The state had cleared James Grosjean. The casino kept him anyway.

In February 2001, the skilled player was walking through the Imperial Palace on the Las Vegas Strip when casino security stopped, handcuffed, searched, and moved him from the public floor to a security office. He had been stopped because he resembled a man a Nevada Gaming Control Board agent was pursuing. When the agent — Paul Stolberg — was reached, the mistake was confirmed and the instruction came back to release Grosjean. Instead, casino personnel and gaming agents spent roughly twenty more minutes examining the belongings taken during the search before letting him leave.

Trial testimony established how the detention was prolonged. While on-site gaming agents tried to reach Stolberg, they asked casino security to delay Grosjean without revealing their involvement. After the release order came, the agents posed as casino employees so they could keep going through his property.

Nersesian and his law partner, Thea Sankiewicz, brought the civil action. In 2004, a Clark County jury awarded Grosjean $99,990 in compensatory damages against Imperial Palace on his federal civil-rights claim and returned another $500,000 in punitive damages. On July 30, 2009, the Nevada Supreme Court, sitting en banc, affirmed liability and the compensatory judgment, held that a private casino does not acquire a public officer's qualified immunity by helping state gaming agents detain someone, and ordered a new trial on punitive damages. In 2010, Nevada's Board of Examiners approved a $65,000 payment to resolve Grosjean's remaining claims against the state.

The ruling preserved a distinction the industry preferred to blur: a casino's right to end play is not legal authority to detain a patron.

A Practice Nobody Else Wanted

Nersesian's casino work began in the mid-1990s, when a construction worker described being mistaken for someone else by casino security, handcuffed, taken into a back room, and threatened before the error was discovered. Nersesian identified false-imprisonment and battery claims, filed the case, and obtained a five-figure settlement.

The matter opened a gap most lawyers avoided. Brief detentions often produced no medical bills, while casinos controlled the surveillance and fielded experienced defense teams. Nersesian accepted the work and built his cases around the records the properties themselves created — video, logs, policies, and communications identifying who blocked an exit, touched a patron, withheld property, summoned police, supplied a justification, and continued the restraint after that justification ended. Because retention periods could be short, he moved promptly to preserve video, and he advised patrons, where lawful, to keep their own recordings and to ask clearly whether they were free to leave — statements that timestamp the moment questioning becomes detention.

At the busiest point, he and Sankiewicz kept approximately fifty casino matters moving at once.

The Law of Counting Cards

Card counting uses information exposed by the game itself. The cards already played alter the composition of those remaining, allowing a player to adjust wagers as the probability changes. No card is marked, no device introduced, no rule secretly altered.

Nevada casinos may stop the play, issue a trespass warning, and exclude a skilled player, subject to laws against discrimination; in 2016 the Nevada Supreme Court reaffirmed the broad common-law right to exclude in Slade v. Caesars Entertainment. But that property right does not create authority to detain a patron by treating lawful skill as cheating. Under Nevada law, a casino with probable cause to suspect a gaming offense may conduct a reasonable detention when statutory conditions are satisfied — and counting cards, winning, and using an alias do not by themselves establish such an offense.

Nersesian's matters test the casino's account against gaming statutes, surveillance, witness testimony, chip records, and the distinction between prohibited devices and lawful advantage play. A changing bet spread may reflect a changing count; a promotion player may follow the written rules exactly; a professional's alias is not itself a gaming offense. The question is what the evidence shows, not the label security attached first.

Caesars, the Griffin Book, and a Jury Verdict

In April 2000, Grosjean and fellow professional Michael Russo observed a three-card poker dealer repeatedly exposing a hole card and used the visible information while playing. Gaming agents accused them of card bending and arrested them for felony cheating. The accusations ended without a trial — while their photographs remained in a private casino-intelligence database.

The Griffin Book, compiled by an agency Robert and Beverly Griffin founded in 1967, had cataloged names and photographs of card counters and accused cheaters for decades. Casinos subscribed to the intelligence and used it to identify and exclude players across properties. The book placed lawful counters and accused cheaters in the same identification system; even an "associate" could be cataloged by proximity, and the aliases and disguises lawful players adopted to avoid cross-property detection could be recast as evidence of suspicion.

Nersesian brought claims against Caesars and Griffin Investigations for false imprisonment, defamation, and battery. In 2005, a jury awarded Grosjean and Russo $100,000 in compensatory damages; Caesars completed a settlement, and the jury assessed punitive damages against Griffin for defamation. The litigation exposed how a repeated database accusation could travel between casinos and acquire authority without new evidence — and made a property acting on shared intelligence answer for the consequences when the information was false.

The Hallway at Maryland Live!

On February 21, 2014, card counter Justin Mills was playing blackjack at Maryland Live! when casino personnel walked him through the property to a secured hallway, where employees and two Anne Arundel County police officers working secondary employment for the casino surrounded him.

A device in Mills's pocket recorded everything. It captured an officer stating that Mills was being detained so the casino could identify and ban him, the officers acknowledging they were not accusing him of wrongdoing, and the ultimatum itself: "You can't leave here unless we I.D. who you are." The alternative offered was a trip to the station for fingerprinting. No citation or police report followed.

Nersesian brought the federal suit. The defense counterclaimed that Mills had violated Maryland's wiretap act by recording his own detention; in May 2017, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett rejected the counterclaim and held the recording lawful. Two months later, the court held that card counting through mental acuity is legal in Maryland. The officers received no qualified immunity because the detention served the private interests of their secondary employer, and the casino and its supervisor could face liability as state actors. The court entered summary judgment for Mills on false imprisonment, and the casino and officers settled on the eve of trial in September 2017.

Johnson, Tsao, and Pistor

In Chad Johnson's dispute with Imperial Palace security, a Clark County jury found Imperial Palace liable for assault, battery, and false imprisonment and awarded Johnson $250,000. The incident also became the first of more than 100 casino-assault matters Nersesian had handled since 1995 to result in criminal charges against a casino employee.

In Tsao v. Desert Palace, Nersesian represented a card counter who received a trespass warning and later returned after Caesars kept sending hotel, promotional, and VIP invitations. Security handcuffed her and moved her to a room to await police — after she had come back in response to the casino's own solicitations. The Ninth Circuit expressly recognized card counting as a legal technique, held that Desert Palace acted under color of state law through its joint enforcement program with Las Vegas police, and reinstated Tsao's battery, false-imprisonment, assault, premises-liability, and defamation claims against the casino.

In Arizona, guards at the Mazatzal Casino handcuffed advantage players and seized money and property. Nersesian sued tribal officers and employees in their personal capacities for conduct alleged to exceed lawful authority. In Pistor v. Garcia, the federal courts allowed those claims to proceed while leaving the tribe's sovereignty intact, and the players received a $211,000 settlement.

The Same Question in Every Setting

In one Tunica matter, Nersesian advised a woman by telephone while casino guards and a police officer surrounded her and the property withheld her chips. He explained that card counting was legal; the officer directed the casino to cash the chips, and the patron left without a lawsuit ever being filed.

In Switzer v. Virgin River Hotel & Casino, two card counters were falsely imprisoned in their hotel room for only about fifteen minutes. The detention involved no claim of physical injury, yet a Clark County jury awarded the players more than $72,000 in compensatory damages and found that the casino's conduct warranted punitive damages. The case then settled for $199,999. The verdict also included roughly $300 for the casino's refusal to cash Switzer's chips. In Lockhart v. Venetian, a federal jury returned a $200,000 verdict for a hotel guest over a separate seizure and removal.

His work has also reached the First Amendment. When the government attempted to ban a book by classifying it as false commercial speech, Nersesian joined the ACLU of Nevada, the Association of American Publishers, and PEN American Center as counsel, asserting full constitutional protection for political and autobiographical writing.

The casino and constitutional matters pose the same structural question in different settings: when a private interest invokes government power, what lawful authority permits the resulting restraint?

Practice, Books, and the Hall of Fame

Nersesian and his wife, Thea Marie Sankiewicz, moved from Detroit to Las Vegas around 1991; she became both his law partner and his co-counsel in matters including Grosjean and Pistor. He graduated from Wayne State University Law School, practiced in Michigan courtrooms, and was admitted to the Nevada bar in 1986. His broader civil work has included technical warranty and product disputes, administrative and employment litigation, and appellate representation — including Milicevic v. Fletcher Jones Imports in the Ninth Circuit.

He wrote Beat the Players: Casinos, Cops and the Game Inside the Game in 2006, covering barrings, identification demands, chip seizures, detentions, and the relationship between casino security and public police. The Law for Gamblers followed in 2016, with guidance on security-room questioning, trespass notices, and transporting a bankroll. He has also addressed casino-security audiences on the lawful handling of advantage players.

In 2014, the blackjack community voted Nersesian into the Blackjack Hall of Fame — its only attorney member, and the only member whose career was built neither on serious play nor on writing game strategy, but on defending the people who do both.