Chumba Casino California Lawsuit Stays Out of Arbitration

A California federal judge denied Chumba Casino owner VGW three times in one order on September 18, 2026, refusing to send four players' spouses into private arbitration and refusing to throw their case out on either jurisdictional ground. The spouses never had accounts and never signed anything, and a court has now confirmed that is enough to keep a gambling-loss claim against VGW out of arbitration.

Be precise about what that does and does not mean. VGW's arbitration clause did not lose an argument here; it never reached these plaintiffs at all, and the suit was built that way. The only previous ruling on a VGW arbitration motion we have reported went the company's way, and the one in Mississippi is still undecided. So the news is a published order approving the route around the clause, not a crack in the clause itself.

We pulled the 20-page order off the federal docket the day after it was signed and read it in full. We found no coverage of the order. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued it in Brown v. VGW Holdings US Inc., No. 4:25-cv-07071-AMO, in the Northern District of California, resolving two motions the company filed at docket entries 38 and 39.

The conclusion is three sentences long and every one of them goes against the company: the motion to compel arbitration is denied, the alternative motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is denied, and the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction is denied.

Why couldn't VGW force the spouses into arbitration?

Because the four plaintiffs never signed it. John Brown, Trena Ostlund, Zachary Parker and Eve Fields are not Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots or Global Poker players. They are the spouses of players, and they sued under state gambling reclamation statutes to recover money their husbands and wives lost. The order calls them nonsignatories, and the arbitration agreements it discusses were signed by those spouses.

That is a different fight from the one VGW usually wins. In Georgia in July, the same company got a player's class action sent to a JAMS arbitrator because it produced a dated business record showing she had accepted Version 15.0 of the LuckyLand terms. Here there was no record to produce, so VGW argued equitable estoppel instead: the spouses should be bound anyway.

The court applied federal substantive law, because neither side contested that the New York Convention governs, and took its standard from the Ninth Circuit's 2006 decision in Comer v. Micor, Inc. Under Comer, a nonsignatory is bound only if they "knowingly exploit" the agreement. VGW made three arguments and lost all three:

The second one matters beyond this case. VGW leaned on Zynga, Inc. v. Mills, an Alabama decision from 2025, and on Fair Gaming Advocates MA LLC v. VGW Holdings Ltd., a Massachusetts Superior Court ruling from December 2024 it cited as support. The judge read both and declined to follow either, on the ground that neither applied federal equitable-estoppel law. The order does not say who won those cases, and neither do we.

How can a Maltese company be sued in California?

This is the part of the order with the longest reach, and it has nothing to do with where anybody played.

VGW argued that its foreign entities have no business being in a California court, and pointed out that none of the plaintiffs lives in California or alleges losses there. The court agreed on that narrow point and ruled against the company anyway, following the Ninth Circuit's 2021 decision in Ayla, LLC v. Alya Skin Pty. Ltd.

The hook is the vendors. The complaint alleges VGW holds long-standing contracts with Jumio Corporation, Yodlee, Inc. and Trustly, Inc. - all California entities, all named as co-defendants - which supply age verification, bank-account linking and payment processing. Those are the services, the order reasons, without which "users of the applications could not transfer money - or even access the application". An ongoing contractual relationship that "envisioned performance" in California is enough for minimum contacts.

And it covers every VGW entity, including the Maltese and Australian ones, for a reason the order spells out: the company's own declaration from associate general counsel Caterina Cavallaro disputed a great deal but never disputed that all the entities contract with those vendors. The court said so explicitly, and added that it therefore "need not wade into" the alter-ego question at all.

What did VGW's own declaration concede?

Enough to be interesting, and not enough to win. Cavallaro states the San Francisco office closed on December 16, 2022, that the US entities began subleasing in Boulder, Colorado on October 17, 2023 and moved to a new Boulder office on February 3, 2024, and that two of the three changed their principal address on their California Statements of Information before this suit was filed. The third, VGW US, Inc., changed its address on the day the complaint was filed. She also puts founder Laurence Escalante's ownership at "between 85% and 90%", against the complaint's claim of 100%.

Which claims survive, and in how many states?

All of them, for now. VGW argued the plaintiffs cannot plead under the laws of ten jurisdictions where none of them lives. The court held that is not a standing question at all but a Rule 23 question for class certification later, citing its own prior rulings. The ten are California, Georgia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, the District of Columbia and Wisconsin.

Nothing here has been proven. The allegations described above - the two-coin structure, the advertising, the promoter partnerships including one with a named influencer defendant, Brian Christopher Misfud - are the plaintiffs' allegations, taken as true only for the purpose of these motions, as the order itself says in a footnote. Celebrity promoter Ryan Seacrest is described in the complaint but is not a defendant. No court has found that VGW did anything unlawful, and the company has not yet answered.

What does this change for a player?

Directly, nothing this week. Your balance, your redemptions and your own arbitration clause are untouched by a ruling about people who never had an account. If you do have one, the window that actually matters to you is the 30-day arbitration opt-out nearly every sweeps operator writes into its terms, and the currency distinction this case turns on is explained in our guide to Gold Coins and Sweeps Coins.

For the record on our own pages: this ruling does not change any score, offer or state list. California is a banned state and we carry no sign-up links there, and Mississippi remains restricted.

Where do VGW's other lawsuits stand right now?

What this ruling changes is the shape of the risk around the operator. VGW is fighting on several fronts at once, and four federal dockets moved in the five days to September 18.

In Mississippi, entry 44 has become readable, and it settles something we could not report two days ago. When we reported the motions to dismiss and compel arbitration in that case we could see only the clerk's label and told readers we could not say which way either ruling went. We can now. On September 17 Judge Henry T. Wingate denied VGW's request for $23,363.78 in attorneys' fees, holding that because the court had excused the plaintiff's delay in amending her complaint, "Plaintiff should not be required to pay attorneys' fees." He also cut her extension request down: she asked for 37 extra days to answer VGW's renewed motions to dismiss and compel arbitration, and got until October 14, 2026. That is the Mississippi case we have been tracking since the stay lifted, and the motion to compel arbitration in it is still undecided.

In Minnesota on September 14, orders on motions to consolidate went on both dockets in the two Minnesota class actions; neither order is readable on the public mirror yet, so we report that they exist and nothing more.

That is on top of the suit Florida's attorney general filed against VGW's Chumba Casino, LuckyLand Slots and Global Poker in August.

Sources & documents

• Order re Defendants' Motion to Compel Arbitration and Motion to Dismiss, Brown v. VGW Holdings US Inc., No. 25-cv-07071-AMO (N.D. Cal. Sept. 18, 2026) - 20 pages, signed by Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín; the source of every quotation, every holding and the Cavallaro declaration details
• Docket entry 75, Brown v. VGW Holdings US Inc. - the docket text and filing date
• Order on Motion for Attorneys' Fees, Saulny v. VGW Holdings Limited, No. 3:24-cv-619-HTW-LGI (S.D. Miss. Sept. 17, 2026) - 3 pages, signed by Judge Henry T. Wingate; the source of the $23,363.78 figure, the quoted holding, the 37-day request and the October 14, 2026 response deadline. This is docket entry 44, which carried no readable document when we reported on it on September 18 and does now
• Docket entries, Engel v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd. (D. Minn.) - entry 28, September 14, 2026, order on motion to consolidate cases; no document available
• Docket entries, Moser v. VGW Holdings Pty Ltd. (D. Minn.) - entry 17, same date, same description
• Docket entries, Saulny v. VGW Holdings Limited - read September 20, 2026; entry 44 is the last filing

Everything attributed to the plaintiffs above is an allegation from a complaint that has not been tested. VGW has not been found liable for anything in this case, and we found no statement from the company to report.

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